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No. 67 

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HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 

Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., 

LL.D., F.B.A. 
Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A, 



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PREFACE 

To tell in brief compass, but with accuracy and 
clearness, the history of the United States in the 
eventful period from 1815 to I860, necessitates the 
exclusion of nearly everything that relates mainly 
to the development of particular States, and of some 
topics which concern the growth of the nation as a 
whole. The present volume, accordingly, has been 
restricted chiefly to the exposition of three lines of 
development, namely, constitutional growth, the rise 
and progress of political parties, and slavery. Side 
by side with these dominating interests run the birth 
and expansion of a new sense of democracy ; and of 
this, too, in the field of its political expression, I have 
sought to give a view. 

To the long list of writers who have traversed this 

period, in whole or in part, every succeeding narrator 

is deeply beholden. To three of them, however, I 

gratefully acknowledge special indebtedness : to Mr. 

James Ford Rhodes, whose monumental Histoiy 

must long remain the definitive account of the period 

subsequent to 1850 ; and to Professor Theodore Clark 

Smith and the late Professor George P. Garrison, 

whose volumes in the American Naiion series are works 

of notable insight. 

William MacDonald. 

Providence, R. I. 

March, 1913. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I The United States in 1815 7 

II Economic and Political Readjustment, 1815- 

1828 25 

III Jacksonian Democracy, 1898-1837 .... 44 

IV Slavery and Abolition, 1815-1840 .... 63 
V Texas and Oregon 82 

VI The War with Mexico 103 

VII The Compromise of 1850 124 

VIII The United States in the Early Fifties . 144 

IX The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise . 166 

X The Struggle for Kansas ..,»,.. 187 

XI The New Republicanism 208 

XII Union or Disunion 230 

Bibliographical Note 251 

Index ,. 253 



VI 



FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

CHAPTER I 

THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 

' The War of 1812 has been called, for the 
United States, a "second war of independ- 
ence." Although, like many figures of speech, 
the saying is neither wholly accurate nor 
suflSciently comprehensive, it nevertheless 
serves to call attention to one important 
outcome of the war. The United States 
had, indeed, been a free and independent 
nation since the treaty of Paris, in 1783, 
yet it had not been able at all times to assert 
its full authority, or to resist aggression, or 
to protect its citizens or their property. 
Discriminating duties on American com- 
merce, scant courtesy in diplomatic relations, 
the impressment of American seamen, the 
search and seizure of vessels and their crews, 
were only the more striking examples of 
the injuries to which, because of its youth, 
weakness, and inexperience, the nation had 
been obliged to submit, and against which 
its dignified protests had commonly gone 
unheeded. 

7 



8 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

With the ratification of the treaty of 
Ghent, however, in December, 1814, the 
long years of qualified dependence came 
to an end. To be sure, the treaty itself con- 
tained no reference to impressment, or the 
right of search, or arbitrary interference 
with American commerce, all of which 
Madison, in his war message of June 1, 1812, 
had adduced as sufficient grounds for a 
declaration of war; but it was generally 
understood that, though not formally re- 
nounced, none of these assumed rights would 
be exercised again. Nor was public opinion 
in this country disturbed by the fact that 
this renewed recognition of the complete 
independence which the United States had 
always claimed was due much less to Eng- 
land's failure in the war, than to the over- 
throw of Napoleon and the end of the 
gigantic European struggle which, to English- 
men at least, had seemed to make the con- 
duct of Great Britain justifiable. It was 
enough that there had been a war, that the 
United States had won, and that now there 
was peace. As to the precise causes of the 
war, men might differ as long as they chose 
to debate, but there was general agreement, 
in England as well as in America, that those 
causes would never operate again. 

The territory included within the limits 
of the United States in 1815 extended from 
the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountain 



TIIE UNITED STATES IN 1815 9 

watershed on the west, and south to the 
Spanish provinces of East and West Florida. 
Portions of the northern boundary, from the 
mouth of the St. Croix River to the St. 
Lawrence, and from the western end of 
Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, 
were as yet undetermined notwithstanding 
several attempts to agree upon the line. 
The original area of 1783 had been more 
than doubled by the purchase of Louisiana, 
in 1803. Beyond the Rocky Mountains, 
where Spain still held possession, there was 
as yet no thought of ultimate American occu- 
pation; but the Florida provinces, possess- 
ing no natural land boundaries, yet at the 
same time blocking the natural expansion of 
the United States to the Gulf of Mexico, 
were already coveted and were destined 
shortly to be absorbed. Territorially, the 
country was a unit; expansion had followed 
natural lines, and the variety of soil and 
climate, the extent of coast line, and the 
control of the great Mississippi valley, made 
the area occupied by the United States 
preeminently fit for the home of a great 
nation. 

The population had long been growing 
apace. The 3,900,000 inhabitants in 1790 
had become 7,200,000 in 1810, and were to 
be 9,600,000 in 1820. Virginia, with a 
population of 974,000 in 1810, was the 
largest State, with New York second and 



10 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Pennsylvania third in rank. By ^ 1820, 
however. New York, with a population then 
of 1,372,000, rose to first place, with Vir- 
ginia second and Pennsylvania third. While 
no State lost population between 1810 and 
1820, the older and smaller States^ of the 
Atlantic seaboard, with virtually their entire 
area occupied by settlement, showed, with 
one or two exceptions, the smallest gains. 
The lower South and the West, on the other 
hand, were exhibiting prodigious growth. 
Alabama, admitted as a State in 1819, had 
127,000 people in 1820; Louisiana, with 
76,000 in 1810, returned 152,000 ten years 
later. Between 1810 and 1820 the population 
of Kentucky leaped from 406,000 to 564,000, 
that of Tennessee from 261,000 to 422,000, 
that of Ohio from 230,000 to 581,000, and 
that of Indiana from 24,000 to 147,000. 
Even the then extreme frontier State of 
Illinois grew, in the same decade, from 
12,000 to 55,000. 

! The source of this great gain in numbers 
was still, as it had been from the beginning, 
mainly the natural increase of population; 
foreign immigration, exclusive of the impor- 
tation of negro slaves, being as yet of slight 
importance. The United States was still 
presenting the conditions which economists 
have pointed to as favorable for a maximum 
natural growth in numbers: namely, a 
healthy climate, fertile soil, abundance of 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 11 

cheap land, freedom from pestilence or 
devastating epidemics, and, save for two 
and a half years, long-continued peace. 
Under such circumstances the birth rate 
tends to be high, families are large, and the 
duration of life is long. Perhaps nowhere 
in the world was there greater opportunity 
for every man to earn a living for himself 
and his family, a higher standard of domestic 
comfort, a more abundant food supply, 
or better physical conditions for health, 
longevity, and the care of young children, 
than in the United States in the first quarter 
of the nineteenth century. 

The distribution of population, on the 
other hand, was very different from that 
with which we of the present day are famil- 
iar. In 1810 there were only eleven towns 
or cities in the United States with a popu- 
lation of 8000 or over, and but thirteen such 
places in 1820; and in each of these years 
this urban population comprised less than 
five per cent, of the total. Less than one- 
third of the total area of the country was 
properly to be regarded as settled. Exten- 
sive tracts in northern New York, north- 
western Pennsylvania, western Virginia and 
northern Ohio were still practically unoc- 
cupied, as were nearly half of Georgia and 
Alabama and two-thirds of Mississippi, 
Indiana, and Illinois. Between the Ohio, 
the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes seven- 



12 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

eighths of the country was still a wilderness 
in 1820. At the close of the War of 1812, 
nine-tenths of the people of the United 
States were living in country districts or 
small communities, for the most part within 
easy reach of the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, 
or a navigable waterway. 

The Union comprised, in 1815, eighteen 
States and five Territories, besides the 
District of Columbia. To the thirteen 
original States had been added Vermont in 
1791, Kentucky in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, 
Ohio in 1802, and Louisiana in 1812. Maine 
was still a part of Massachusetts, and was 
not admitted as a State until 1820. The 
Territory of Indiana, which at first had com- 
prised all of the original Northwest Terri- 
tory not included in the State of Ohio, had 
been reduced by the formation of Michigan 
Territory in 1805, and of lUinois Territory 
in 1809; the remainder became the State of 
Indiana in 1816, Illinois following in 1818. 
The Territory of Mississippi was coexten- 
sive with the later States of Alabama and 
Mississippi, save for their extreme southern 
portions, which still belonged to Spain. 
Mississippi entered the Union as a State in 
1817, and Alabama in 1819. The Terri- 
tory of Missouri, organized in 1812, com- 
prised all of the Louisiana acquisition not 
included in the State of Louisiana. 

In the organization of their governments 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 13 

the States presented in the main the same 
general characteristics. With the excep- 
tion of Connecticut and Rhode Island, each 
had a written constitution emanating from 
the people, and subject to amendment or 
revision either at stated intervals or whenever 
the people chose. Each had a governor, a 
legislature of two houses, and a graded system 
of courts. The democratic movement which 
had carried Jefferson to the presidency in 
1801, and which was shortly to bring Andrew 
Jackson to the same office, had already shown 
itself in State constitutions in more liberal 
provisions regarding the suffrage, an increase 
of legislative power at the expense of the 
executive, and a tendency to elective rather 
than appointive officers. With the excep- 
tion of Louisiana, each had inherited the 
English common law, and had begun to 
build about it a structure of statutes and 
judicial decisions. The federal courts, how- 
ever, had already begun to exercise a uni- 
fying influence upon the laws of the States, 
although the great constitutional decisions 
of Chief-Justice Marshall were, for the most 
part, yet to come. 

In local government, on the other hand, 
there was much diversity. New England 
still clung to the town meeting, with its 
direct control of local interests by the whole 
body of voters, and its invaluable oppor- 
tunity for training in public speaking and in 



14 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

the practical duties of citizenship. The 
South still had its old type of county govern- 
ment, a representative system under which 
the larger landed gentry retained effective 
political control. New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania had mixed systems, com- 
pounded of both town and county ele- 
ments, and befitting States in which populous 
communities were more numerous than in 
the South, and the county more important 
than in New England. In Ohio, as in the 
other States presently to be formed west and 
north of it, the early settlers were inclined 
to reproduce the type of local institutions 
with which they had been familiar in the 
States from which they came; with the 
result that in the northern sections, peopled 
principally by emigrants from New England 
and New York, a modified town system was 
established, while in the southern portions, 
mainly settled from Virginia and North 
Carolina, a modified county system was the 
rule. 

If it was true that the War of 1812 freed 
the United States from a certain irritating 
subjection to England and France which 
had been its bane, it was also true that the 
war went far to break the hold of old party 
allegiances, and opened the way to a recon- 
struction of parties and a far-reaching read- 
justment of political life. The Federalists, 
memorable for the skill with which they 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 15 

had launched the new republic, had over- 
reached themselves in the Alien and Sedi- 
tion Acts of 1798; and after their defeat by 
the Republicans, under the astute leader- 
ship of Jefferson, in 1800, they were never 
again able to win a national election or con- 
trol either house of Congress. In New 
England, especially in Massachusetts, and 
in a few other States, they were still a power, 
but their opposition to the war, their efforts 
to prevent the use of the militia by the 
Federal Government, and their connection 
with the Hartford Convention, had gone 
far to dim their historical prestige, and 
withered them from a national party to a 
State or local faction. 

The aristocracy of birth, education, wealth, 
business or social prominence, and public 
service which Federalism represented, em- 
bodying as it did the more obvious vested 
rights and interests of the community, gave 
to the country a strong and efficient govern- 
ment. It was, indeed, of inestimable advan- 
tage that a party directly, if to some degree 
selfishly, interested in a firm and orderly 
conduct of national affairs, controlled the 
government during its formative years. 
An administrative organization was per- 
fected, the national debt funded, a sound 
financial system inaugurated, and a dignified 
diplomacy exercised. The sympathy and 
cooperation of a well-to-do and educated 



16 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

class were secured for the maintenance of 
a government which, however oHgarchical 
at times in form, was in spirit a government 
by the best for the benefit of all. 

It was the mission of Jeffersonian Repub- 
licanism to replace this aristocratic regime 
by a new social order, under which the 
people at large should enjoy more direct 
political control. Jefferson, more familiar 
than any American of his time with the 
causes and principles of the French Revo- 
lution, and sympathizing at heart with the 
great democratic ferment of which the Revo- 
lution was only the more violent manifesta- 
tion, sought, by reducing government to 
its lowest terms, to apply what he believed 
to be the original theory of the Constitution: 
a government of strictly delegated powers, 
under which whatever was not specifically 
granted to the nation was absolutely with- 
held. He had opposed the creation of a 
national bank, in 1791, not because a bank 
might not be a good thing, but because the 
Constitution did not authorize it; and the 
written opinion in which he summarized his 
views is still the best epitome of his political 
philosophy and of his theory of American 
constitutional law. 

Yet it cannot be said that the new policy 
was, on the whole, strikingly different in 
practice from the old. Jefferson did, indeed, 
cut down the army and navy, abolish a 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 17 

superfluous set of federal courts, repeal 
internal taxes, replace Federalist civil officers 
with Republicans, and greatly reduce the 
debt. The general administrative system, 
however, could not be materially altered, 
since it conformed to the Constitution and 
to the needs of the country. Jefferson could 
reduce the national government to lower 
terms, but the general scheme framed by 
the Federalists could hardly be dispensed 
with. Nor was he entirely consistent either 
as a Democrat or as a strict constructionist. 
The last six years of his presidency saw the 
restoration of about the same measure of 
formality in executive life as had character- 
ized Washington and Adams; and he stepped 
outside of the Constitution and bought 
Louisiana, without perceptible tremor or 
misgiving, when in his judgment the national 
welfare required it. 

Political consistency, however, has never 
been rigorously exacted from statesmen, 
and Jefferson is entitled to as great latitude 
of judgment as has commonly been accorded 
to other great popular leaders. And the 
political and social changes which took place 
in the decade of which the War of 1812 is 
the center were, from most points of view, 
very considerable. A new generation of 
young men, to whom the American Revolu- 
tion was a glorious tradition rather than a 
personal experience, came upon the stage 



18 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

and took direction of political affairs. It 
was they who, under the magnetic leader- 
ship of Henry Clay, pushed the war to a 
successful conclusion. Old party lines be- 
came dim or disappeared altogether, clearing 
the ground for new issues and new doctrines. 
The basis of suffrage widened with the 
gradual removal of religious and property 
qualifications. Most potent of all was the 
new consciousness of nationality, born of 
common participation in a successful war. 

Of this new national spirit the West was 
easily the most complete embodiment. * ' The 
West" of that day had barely touched Lake 
Michigan or the Mississippi, although to 
most men in the East anything beyond the 
Appalachian Mountains seemed indefinitely 
remote. Raw and crude as it was, however, 
the West had drawn its people from the 
best blood of the older States, and was as 
Anglo-Saxon a region as any in the country. 
Life was hard and rude, conveniences few, 
manners unconventional and often rough; 
for the men who were conquering a wilder- 
ness, fighting Indians and making homes 
were poor, and cared little about a new- 
comer's social origins provided he was honest 
and intelligent and could work. 

Such a region became inevitably the home 
of democratic freedom. There were no 
old families, no long tradition of public 
office, no inherited estates, no marked con- 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 19 

trasts of wealth. In their place was equality 
of opportunity for everyone who cared to 
make his own way. Abundance of cheap 
land increased the number of landed pro- 
prietors, widened the basis of suffrage, and 
made the farmers the foundation of a free 
society. There was not wanting, of course, 
the inevitable defect of the quality: impa- 
tience of restraint, frank contempt for form 
and custom, slight regard for experience or 
training, and rough and ready ways of 
bringing things to pass. Yet even these 
characteristics, irritating as they long were 
to the more formal and conservative East, 
were only the temporary and superficial 
expressions of the democratic spirit now 
planted as firmly in America as in Europe, 
and whose struggle for recognition and con- 
trol gives to the history of the nineteenth 
century its absorbing interest. 

Yet there were disturbing features. With 
all its fresh consciousness of nationality, 
unity of national spirit had yet to be at- 
tained. Between the slave States and the 
free States the difference was one not 
merely of climate or of race relationship, 
but of civilization. The East feared and 
distrusted the West, where the admission of 
new States, each with two senators, threat- 
ened the influence of the East in Congress. 
The foreign slave trade, prohibited by law 
in 1807, had not been prohibited in fact; 



20 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

the domestic slave trade flourished; and in 
Indiana Territory there had been public 
opposition to the anti-slavery provision ol 
the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. No 
effective scheme of national party organi- 
zation had yet been developed, conventions 
and platforms were still half a generation 
in the future, and the selection of candidates 
for President and Vice-President was left 
to a self -constituted congressional caucus. 

The United States of 1815 was a vast, 
thinly settled country without railroads or 
telegraphs, with but few canals, and with 
the steamboat just beginning to be per- 
fected. The construction of turnpikes had 
been entered upon, but most of the common 
roads were badly laid out, poorly built, and 
in wretched condition in wet weather or 
when much used. The traveler who could 
not go by sailing vessel along the coast 
made his journey by stagecoach, or more 
often by private carriage or on horseback. 
Inns were small, dirty, and crowded to the 
limit of decency. Emigrants to the West 
made their way in ox-carts, driving their 
cattle before them. Communities fifty 
miles apart were more remote than cities 
which today are separated by a thousand 
miles. 

A high standard of domestic comfort 
prevailed, notwithstanding the inconven- 
iences, as they would now seem, of ordinary 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 21 

domestic life. Beautiful examples of colonial 
architecture were to be found in Salem and 
Providence, in Boston, New York, and 
Philadelphia, and in tidewater Virginia. 
The average farmhouse of the better class 
was commodious and comfortable. But 
houses were still heated by open fires or 
stoves, lighted by candles or whale-oil 
lamps, and supplied with water from springs 
or wells on the premises. Spinning, weaving, 
and dyeing were common household occu- 
pations, and ready-made clothing was un- 
known. Hand labor was the rule in the 
shop and on the farm, ministers received a 
part of their meager salaries in food or fuel, 
doctors bled, blistered, and purged, lawyers 
and judges "rode the circuit," and school 
teachers plied the rod and "boarded 'round." 
Intellectually the nineteenth century in 
America had not yet come to differ radically 
from the eighteenth. Common schools and 
academies, found everywhere in the North 
and older West, gave meager elementary 
instruction. For young men who intended 
to be doctors, lawyers, or ministers, upwards 
of thirty-five colleges offered courses of 
classical study, to be supplemented, in the 
case of lawyers and doctors, by private 
study under some local practitioner. Higher 
education for women and technical or indus- 
trial education were not yet regarded as 
necessary. A few of the larger towns pos- 



22 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

sessed circulating libraries, and recent Eng- 
glish and French books were not infre- 
quently seen; but books in general were 
more expensive than now, and "cheap 
editions" had not yet begun to spread good 
literature among the masses. On the other 
hand,^ the careful reading of good books, 
especially the Bible, was a habit of the age, 
and helped to form an English style which, 
notably in the case of public men, was often 
as correct, forcible, and polished as the best 
English speech or writing of the day. 

The religious life of the United States 
still resembled, in the main, that of the later 
colonial period. Congregationalism was still, 
to some extent, a State church in Massa- 
chusetts and Connecticut, as well as the pre- 
vailing faith of the influential classes else- 
where in New England. Part of the hostility 
to Jefferson in that section was due to his 
free religious views — views which today 
would perhaps cause him to be classed as a 
Unitarian, but which in his time were 
regarded as near akin to atheism. The 
Unitarian movement, however, had already 
been launched, and was shortly to precipi- 
tate^ in New England an epoch-making 
religious change. The Episcopal body, not 
yet strong in New England, was numerous 
in the Middle States and predominant in 
the South, although in both sections the 
Baptists and Methodists were strong rivals. 



THE UNITED STATES IN 1815 23 

In the West Baptists, Presbyterians, and 
Methodists predominated, and on the fron- 
tier the circuit preacher, as devoted as was 
ever missionary priest, carried the min- 
istrations of religion far and wide. Great 
revivals periodically swept over whole com- 
munities, and theological controversy raged 
as sects multiplied. 

Between the East and the West, not- 
withstanding certain obvious contrasts, there 
was, on the whole, essential social likeness. 
To pass the southern boundary of Pennsyl- 
vania, on the other hand, was to enter a 
different community. Here the forced labor 
of negro slaves, mainly spent in the pro- 
duction of cotton, rice, and tobacco, formed 
the basis of economic prosperity. Between 
the whites and the negroes was fixed the 
impassable gulf of race and color; and 
although the majority of whites owned few 
or no slaves, it was the slaveholding aris- 
tocracy that set the tone of social and polit- 
ical life. Plantation life did, indeed, develop 
masterful men, able and aggressive in polit- 
ical leadership, chivalrous and polished 
beyond the common habit of the North. 
But slavery was already a "peculiar insti- 
tution," out of harmony with the free spirit 
of the age, and putting more and more upon 
the defensive the section that lived by it. 
Between the patriarchal system of the South, 
with its staple agriculture and slave labor. 



24 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

and the growing industrialism of the North, 
with its freer labor and more open mind, 
there was at bottom an "irrepressible con- 
flict," concealed for the moment by the new 
feeling of nationality and the new realiza- 
tion of independence, but destined to be, 
for nearly fifty years, the one overshadowing 
question of American politics. 



t 



/ 



CHAPTER II 

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 

1815-1828 

The year 1808 marks the beginning, for 
the United States, of a new period of indus- 
trial development. The passage of the 
Embargo Act in that year, followed in 1809 
by the Non-intercourse Act, and then, three 
years later, by war, practically stopped for 
the time being the importation of European 
manufactures, and compelled the country 
to rely upon its own resources. The inven- 
tion of the cotton gin, in 1793, had for the 
first time made it possible to put cotton upon 
the market in large quantities, and had 
greatly stimulated the production of that 
staple. Yet in 1804 there were only four 
cotton mills in the United States, and Eng- 
land still took the larger part of the American 
crop.^ New England capital was mainly 
invested in shipping and foreign trade, 
while the South, apparently set apart by 
nature for the production of a few great 
staples, saw no profit in manufactures equal 

^ Bogart, Economic History of the United States, 142. 

25 



26 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

to that already being realized from agri- 
culture. 

The period from 1808 to 1815 saw the 
establishment, or the development from 
previous small beginnings, of manufactures 
of cotton, woolen, and linen textiles; of iron, 
leather, paper, and glass; of candles, soap, 
earthenware, and oil; and of numerous other 
articles of general use. The annual value of 
manufactured products was estimated in 
1810 at nearly $199,000,000, an increase of 
$79,000,000 over the previous year. As 
foreign trade was for the time being nearly 
destroyed, first by the embargo and then by 
Napoleonic decrees and British orders in 
council, the production was almost exclu- 
sively for home consumption. 

The return of peace brought in upon the 
American market a flood of English manu- 
factured goods, a large part of which repre- 
sented accumulated stocks, and which were 
offered at prices that for the moment defied 
competition. Imports rose in value from 
less than $13,000,000 in 1814 to $147,000,000 
in 1816, a figure higher than was attained 
in any subsequent year until 1850. The 
customs receipts exceeded $36,000,000, nearly 
three times the amount estimated by Dallas, 
the Secretary of the Treasury, and consti- 
tuting nearly four-fifths of the total receipts 
of the government for that year.^ 

^ Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 161. 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 27 

With American capital and labor thus 
threatened, and with peace in Europe 
opening a prospect of new markets for Ameri- 
can products, a demand for protection was 
inevitable. Madison urged protection in 
his annual message in December, 1815, and 
Dallas submitted an elaborate report and 
the draft of a bill. Out of the debates in 
Congress, reinforced by a general demand 
throughout the country, came the Tariff 
Act of 1816. Although not, as has often 
been said, the first protective tariff, it was 
the first in which duties were consistently 
imposed with a view to protection rather 
than revenue. The vote in favor of the bill 
was not, indeed, overwhelming. New Eng- 
land was divided, though upon details rather 
than upon principle; while the South cast 
thirty -four votes in the House of Represen- 
tatives against the bill to twenty-three in 
its favor. Webster, speaking for the com- 
mercial interests of New England, argued 
against the bill, while Calhoun of South 
Carolina supported it. On the whole, how- 
ever, the act was treated as a measure of 
general national benefit, dictated by the 
exigency of a national danger. 

A few days before the Tariff Act became 
law, Madison affixed his signature to a 
bill creating a national bank. The first 
Bank of the United States, chartered in 
1791 at the suggestion of Alexander Ham- 



28 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

ilton, with a capital of $10,000,000, had 
expired by limitation in 1811. A bill to 
renew the charter failed in the Senate by the 
casting vote of the Vice-President, George 
Clinton. For the next five years the gov- 
ernment funds were intrusted to State 
banks, of which there were eighty-eight 
in 1811. Dallas, who became Secretary 
of the Treasury in 1814, strongly favored 
a return "to the old system; and after the 
veto by Madison of a bank bill in 1815, 
a bill creating the second Bank of the 
United States finally became law April 16, 
1816. 

The act of 1816 provided for a bank with 
a capital of $35,000,000. One-fifth of the 
capital was held by the United States, which 
also was given a corresponding representa- 
tion in the board of directors. Branches were 
to be established in the several States and 
in the District of Columbia, the main ofiice 
being in Philadelphia. The funds of the 
government were to be deposited in the 
bank or its branches, unless the Secretary 
of the Treasury at any time directed other- 
wise. In return for the use of the govern- 
ment moneys, the bank was to act as the 
fiscal agent of the United States; was 
authorized to issue notes, to the amount of 
its capital stock, which the government 
undertook to receive so long as they were 
redeemable at par in specie; and was 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 29 

guaranteed the enjoyment of its monopoly 
privileges for twenty years. 

With the enactment of a protective tariff 
and the erection of a bank, the young 
Republicans in Congress had laid the foun- 
dations of a broad national policy. It was 
clear, however, that the republicanism of 
1816 was very different from the body of 
doctrine that bore that name before the war. 
Neither protection nor a bank could be 
justified save under a broad, or loose, con- 
struction of the federal Constitution, such 
as Hamilton had brilliantly championed in 
1790-91. The whole sum and substance of 
the strict construction theory of the Con- 
stitution had been stated by Jefferson, as 
it happened, in an official opinion against 
the constitutionality of the first bank. The 
young Republicans had now seized the 
constitutional mantle of the Federalists, 
and in so doing prepared the way for the 
new alignment of parties which was presently 
to take place. 

The attitude of the three great leaders 
who for the next generation were to hold 
the center of the political stage is as inter- 
esting as it is important. Webster, shortly 
to be acclaimed as the greatest of American 
constitutional lawyers, opposed the tariff 
and the bank. Calhoun, the intellectual 
leader of the South and before long the chief 
exponent of State rights, strict construe- 



so FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

tion, and nullification, was now a nation- 
alist and a broad constructionist, supporting 
both the tariff and the bank. Clay, who as 
Senator from Kentucky had opposed the 
renewal of the charter of the first bank in 
1811, as Speaker of the House supported the 
bank bill of 1816. Within a dozen years 
the positions of Webster and Calhoun, as 
also the positions of the sections which they 
represented, were to be reversed, and each 
was supporting that which had formerly 
been condemned. 

To the demand for a protective tariff and 
a bank was added the demand for federal 
aid to internal improvements. The West 
of 1815 was, indeed, little more than the 
now near-by country just beyond the Appa- 
lachian Mountains; yet it could be reached 
only by a toilsome journey over roads which 
as yet showed little engineering skill. More- 
over, while such highways as there were 
might suflSce for emigrants, post-riders, or 
occasional travelers, they hindered almost 
as much as they aided the development of 
commerce. The prosperity of the West 
depended upon the development of roads 
and canals and the improvement of river 
channels, by means of which the grain, 
flour, cattle, and other products of the 
region could reach a market. 

With all its energy and ambition the West 
as yet had little capital, and the develop- 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 31 

ment of adequate transportation facilities 
on so vast a scale seemed, to the new com- 
munities, beyond their power. The tide of 
westward migration which set in immedi- 
ately after the war raised again the question 
of federal aid. It was urged that roads and 
canals, though bringing immediate benefit 
to the towns and districts through which 
they ran, were in fact only links in the 
chain of interstate highways, indispensable 
to commercial, agricultural, and industrial 
growth, serving to bind the people of the 
States together, and a necessary safeguard 
in case of war. The expense of construction 
and maintenance, accordingly, ought not 
to be devolved upon any one State, but 
should be assumed by the federal govern- 
ment as a national undertaking, 

Madison, in his last annual message in 
December, 1816, urged upon the considera- 
tion of Congress the necessity of a com- 
prehensive system of internal improvements. 
When, however, Calhoun secured the passage 
of a "bonus bill," appropriating for that 
purpose the bonus of $1,500,000 which the 
Bank of the United States was to pay for 
its privileges, together with the dividends 
received by the government on its portion 
of the bank stock, Madison vetoed the bill 
on the ground that a constitutional amend- 
ment authorizing such expenditure was 
necessary, Monroe, who succeeded Madi- 



32 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

son as President in 1817, took the same view. 
It was not until 1825, when John Quincy 
Adams became President, that internal 
improvements received active executive 
support. 

In the meantime, however, the Cumber- 
land Road, begun by the United States in 
1806, was extended steadily westward 
through southern Ohio and Indiana. The 
first steamboat appeared on the Ohio in 
1811, and by 1816, when the first trip up 
the Mississippi from New Orleans was made, 
there were at least fifteen steamboats ply- 
ing on Western rivers. The steamboat 
solved the problem of navigation up stream, 
but for many years a vast commerce down 
stream continued to be carried by the 
cheaper method of flatboats or rafts. In 
1817, convinced that federal aid could not 
be obtained, the State of New York began 
the construction of the Erie Canal, con- 
necting Lake Erie with the Hudson. The 
completion of the canal in 1825 assured the 
commercial supremacy of New York City, 
at the same time that it greatly facilitated 
travel and commerce between the East and 
the West. 

With protection, a national bank, and 
internal improvements as starting-points, 
the ground was being cleared for the for- 
mation of a new political party. Consti- 
tutionally the new party must accept Ham- 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 33 

ilton's theory of implied powers, or loose 
construction, since upon that ground alone 
could either of the policies just mentioned 
be justified. It was evident that the old 
Republican party, historically bound to 
strict construction, could not long remain 
united in the face of the new nationalism. 

The leader of the new movement was 
Henry Clay, who since 1813 had been Speaker 
of the House of Representatives. A win- 
some orator and skillful politician, the idol 
of young men and the embodiment of the 
best spirit of the West, Clay was preemi- 
nently fitted for the task of forming and 
directing a new party; and his aggressive 
championship of the "American system," 
as he styled the new program, won for it a 
rapidly increasing support. Closely in sym- 
pathy with him was John Quincy Adams, 
Monroe's Secretary of State: a statesman 
of large caliber and strong national spirit, 
destined, if precedent should continue to 
be regarded, to succeed Monroe in the 
presidential office. Webster, too, though 
opposed to the tariff of 1816, must even- 
tually ally himself with the new republican- 
ism, for the reason that the constitutional 
doctrines which, as a lawyer, he was already 
expounding with consummate power left 
him no other ground on which to stand. 
And when, in 1819, in the case of McCul- 
loch vs. Maryland, the Supreme Court 



S4 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

upheld in all respects the constitutionality 
of the Bank of the LTnited States, there was 
added to political theory the final weight 
of judicial decision. 

The expansion of the United States in 
the direction of its natural boundaries, 
which in 1803 had added to the original area 
the vast province of Louisiana, made further 
progress in 1819 in the acquisition of Florida. 
The Spanish province of West Florida, 
with the important port of Mobile, had been 
claimed by the United States as part of 
Louisiana. Spain, however, declined to 
admit the claim and also refused to sell. 
Accordingly, in 1810, Madison took it by 
force, and in 1811 Congress, by a secret 
act, authorized the seizure of East Florida 
also; but the protest of Great Britain checked 
further aggTession, and in 1813 the Ameri- 
can troops were withdrawn. 

The position of the Floridas, preventing 
direct access by land to the GuK of Mexico 
and affording convenient asylum for fugi- 
tive slaves and hostile Indians, was peculiarly 
irritating to the United States. The Span- 
ish authorities, embarrassed by the unhappy 
condition of affairs in Spain, could not or 
would not maintain order. In 1818 Andrew 
Jackson invaded East Florida, took St. 
Marks and Pensacola, and summarily execu- 
ted two British subjects. February 22, 1819, 
Adams concluded with Spain a treaty by 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 35 

which, in return for the assumption of certain 
claims of American citizens against Spain, 
to an amount not exceeding $5,000,000, 
East and West Florida were ceded to the 
United States. The southern boundary of 
the United States was thus rounded to the 
Gulf, and the control of the Mississippi 
further assured. By the same treaty the 
western boundary of the United States was 
fixed, beginning in the Sabine River, and 
Spain relinquished all claim to territory 
on the Pacific north of the forty-second 
parallel — the northern boundary of the 
present State of California. 

While the negotiations with Spain were 
proceeding, and before the treaty was signed, 
the twin issues of sectionalism and slavery 
challenged the attention of the nation. 
Early in 1818 there had been presented to 
Congress the application of the legislature 
of Missouri, which had been organized 
as a Territory in 1812, for the admission of 
part of the Territory as a State. February 
17, 1819, the House passed a bill for admis- 
sion with an amendment imposing restric- 
tions on the further extension of slavery in 
the new State; but the Senate refused to 
concur. 

December 14 Alabama became a State. 
Of the twenty-two States now in the Union, 
eleven were free and eleven slave. The 
disproportionate growth of population in 



S6 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

the North and the South had long since 
given the free States a majority in the 
House; but with the Senate equally divided 
between the sections, slavery was secure 
against federal interference. The admis- 
sion of Missouri with slavery would not only 
destroy this sectional balance, but would 
also perpetuate slavery in a region north 
of that in which slave labor had thus far 
been regarded as necessary. 

When Congress met in December, 1819, 
the admission of Missouri with slavery was 
again urged. In the meantime the people 
of the District of Maine, with the approval 
of Massachusetts, had held a constitutional 
convention and applied for admission as a 
State. As there was no question but that 
Maine would be free, the South demanded 
the recognition of slavery in Missouri as an 
equitable offset. 

The struggle which ensued forms a land- 
mark in the history of slavery in the United 
States. The House passed a bill to admit 
Maine. The Senate added a "rider" in the 
form of an amendment admitting Missouri 
with slavery, but prohibiting slavery for- 
ever in the remainder of the territory ac- 
quired from France north of 36° 30'. The 
House rejected the amendment, and the re- 
sult was a deadlock. Throughout the country 
the excitement was intense, and a flood 
of petitions, remonstrances, and resolutions 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 37 

poured in upon Congress. ^ A compromise 
was finally effected by which the Senate 
agreed to allow the Maine and Missouri 
bills to be voted upon separately, while the 
House accepted the amendment permitting 
slavery in Missouri but excluding it from 
the remainder of the Louisiana purchase. 

In March, 1820, Maine became a member 
of the Union. The admission of Missouri, 
however, was delayed. When the Consti- 
tution of Missouri was submitted to Congress 
for approval, it was found to contain a 
clause prohibiting free negroes or mulattoes 
from entering or settling in the State. As 
this was apparently a violation of the Federal 
Constitution and of the rights of citizens 
under it, the legislature of Missouri was 
required, by a "solemn public act," to give 
pledge that the clause in question should 
never be so construed as to deprive any 
citizen of any State of the privileges and 
immunities to which he was entitled under 
the Constitution of the United States. The 
legislature accepted the condition, and in 
August, 1821, Missouri was admitted. 

The significance of the Missouri Compro- 
mise lay primarily in the fact that it estab- 
lished a geographical line, north of which, 
save in Missouri, slavery was forever to be 
prohibited, but south of which it was, by 
inference, to be permitted. In so doing, 
Congress asserted its right not only to ex- 



38 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

elude slavery from a portion of the public 
domain, but also to determine, in this re- 
spect, what the social institutions of par- 
ticular States should be. Only remotely 
was the compromise a step towards aboli- 
tion, since there was in it no expression of 
right or disposition to interfere with slavery 
in any State in which it had hitherto existed. 
What the compromise did was to put slavery 
upon the defensive by stamping it as a 
"peculiar institution," permissible, indeed, 
under State law, but subject to geographical 
restriction in the interest of national weKare. 
In his second inaugural address, March, 
1821, Monroe congratulated the country 
upon the continuance of friendly relations 
with European powers, but spoke with 
some anxiety of the war which was still going 
on between Spain and its American colonies. 
The opposition to Bourbon domination in 
Spain had been taken advantage of in the 
Spanish- American colonies, and by 1821 all 
of them, from Mexico southward, had de- 
clared their independence and set up revo- 
lutionary governments. When, in 1823, the 
so-called Holy Alliance was believed to be 
preparing to assist Spain in reestablishing its 
authority. Great Britain proposed to the 
United States a joint declaration against 
European intervention in the colonies; but 
Adams, who did not care to see the United 
States in the position of "a cock-boat to 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 39 

a British man-of-war," declined. Russia, 
meantime, had advanced a claim to all of 
the Pacific coast of North America north 
of the fifty-first parallel, and closed the 
region to foreign traders. 

It was this situation that called out the 
declaration of the "Monroe doctrine." In 
his annual message in December, 1823, 
Monroe, speaking with reference to Russia, 
declared that "the American continents, 
by the free and independent condition which 
thev have assumed and maintain, are hence- 
forth not to be considered as subjects for fu- 
ture colonization by any European powers." 
As to the Spanish colonies, the message 
announced that any attempt to extend the 
European political system "to any portion 
of this hemisphere" would be regarded as 
"dangerous to our peace and >: safety " ; and 
that interference with the colonies "for the 
purpose of oppressing them, or controlling, 
in any other manner, their destiny," could 
be viewed in no other light than "as the 
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition 
towards the United States." The warning 
was effectual, and projects of intervention 
were abruptly dropped. In 1824 Russia 
by treaty relinquished its claims on the 
Pacific coast south of 54° 40'. 

Monroe was not a man of forceful per- 
sonality, and the great events of his adminis- 
trations were the results of influences over 



40 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

which he himself exercised little controL 
The successes of his foreign policy are to 
be credited to Adams rather than to him. 
He was, however, reelected without opposi- 
tion in 1820, and would have been the unani- 
mous choice of the electors but for the ac- 
tion of a New Hampshire elector, who cast 
a solitary vote for Adams. So complete, on 
the surface, was the obliteration of old party 
lines that Monroe's second administration 
(1821-25) came to be known as the "era 
of good feehng." In reahty the period was 
one of personal followings and factional dif- 
ferences out of which were presently to come 
a general political reorganization, a new 
drawing of party lines, and new and serious 
aspects of the struggle between particularism 
and nationalism. 

Of the new issues that made for section- 
alism, that of the tariff seemed most threat- 
ening. The tariff of 1816, though affording 
a higher and more general measure of pro- 
tection than had existed before, failed 
appreciably of its object, partly because of 
defects in the act itself, and partly because 
of a financial panic in 1819. In 1824, ac- 
cordingly, a general revision was made, 
with increased protection for textiles, iron, 
glass, and lead, and a specific duty on wool. 
New England divided on the bill, the vote 
of that section in the House being fifteen 
in favor to twenty- three in opposition; while 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 41 

in the South only one vote was given 
for the bill to forty-seven against it. In 
the Middle States, on the other hand, sixty 
of the seventy-five votes were given for the 
bill, while in the West there was not a vote 
in opposition. 

Clearly the tariff was becoming a sectional 
issue, and the attitude of the sections was 
changing. Webster, still representing a 
commercial constituency, spoke weightily 
against the bill; but New England as a 
whole had read the signs of the times, and 
an economic revolution which was soon to 
transform that section from a commercial 
to a manufacturing region was already well 
advanced. The South, on the other hand, 
with no manufactures to protect and with 
its fortunes bound more and more to cotton, 
was swinging rapidly towards free trade. 
And when, in 1828, the "tariff of abomina- 
tions," with its extraordinarily high duties 
on raw materials, became law by the unex- 
pected aid of New England votes, Webster 
appeared as the champion of protection, 
while the Legislature of South Carolina, 
adopting an elaborate report framed by 
Vice-President Calhoun, solemnly protested 
against the act as a violation of the Consti- 
tution. 

The multiplicity of candidates in the 
presidential election of 1824 showed how 
completely old party lines had disappeared. 



42 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

The leading candidate was John Quincy 
Adams, whose position and services as Sec- 
retary of State gave him by precedent the 
first claim. Clay, the Speaker of the House, 
and like Adams a broad constructionist, 
was a formidable aspirant. William H. 
Crawford of Georgia, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, had strong support, but his nomi- 
nation by a congressional caucus, an early 
device long in use but now discredited, hurt 
his cause. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, 
the "hero of New Orleans," was sure of 
strong support, although his supposed sym- 
pathy with protection was counted upon 
to weaken his candidacy in the South. 
Calhoun, the Secretary of War, coveted the 
high office, but stepped aside for the time 
being to accept the unimportant honor of 
the Vice-Presidency. 

The result of the election was the choice 
of Calhoun for Vice-President, but no 
choice for President. Of the electoral votes 
Jackson received 99, Adams 84, Crawford 
41, and Clay 37. Under the Constitution 
the House of Representatives was required 
to choose from the three candidates having, 
respectively, the highest number of votes. 
The influence of Clay, who was ineligible, 
was naturally thrown for Adams, and the 
latter was elected. The outcome had been 
foreseen before the choice was made, and 
the cry of a "corrupt bargain" raised; and 



POLITICAL READJUSTMENT 43 

when, in March, 1825, Adams made Clay 
his Secretary of State, the truth of the charge, 
which Clay had indignantly denied, was by 
many regarded as conclusive. 

Jackson, though conceding the consti- 
tutionality of the election, insisted that he 
himself was the popular choice, and that the 
"will of the people" had been thwarted; 
and he lost no opportunity to spread, as 
he doubtless sincerely believed, the "cor- 
rupt bargain" accusation. John Randolph, 
Senator from Virginia, poured out the 
vials of his wrath on "the combination of 
the Puritan and the black-leg." It was a 
heavy burden for the new administration, 
and one which Adams, with all his ability 
and statesmanship, was ill-fitted to bear. 
So far as the recommendations of his mes- 
sages are concerned, their breadth of view 
and national spirit entitle Adams to a 
place in the front rank of American Presi- 
dents; but a prevailing public opinion 
classed him as of the old regime, and against 
the on-coming tide of Jacksonian democracy 
he was powerless. The old order was 
changing, giving place to new. 



CHAPTER III 

JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

1828-1837 

The presidential campaign of 1828 may 
be said to have begun with the election of 
Adams by the House of Representatives in 
1825. The new party lines were still indis- 
tinct, and national nominating conventions 
had yet to be evolved. In October, 1825, 
Jackson was nominated by the legislature 
of his own State, Tennessee, and for the 
next two years similar action by legislatures 
or other bodies in all parts of the country 
kept the ball rolling. The friends of Craw- 
ford were won over by Martin Van Buren, 
who early in 1827 made a tour of the 
South for that purpose. The action of Van 
Buren was especially significant because it 
carried with it the support of the "Albany 
regency," the political machine which since 
1820 had become increasingly powerful in 
New York. 

Early in Adams's administration the 
followers of Clay and Adams took the name 

44 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 45 

of National Republicans, a name which 
they were later to exchange for that of 
Whigs. The followers of Jackson, united 
as yet by a common opposition to the admin- 
istration more than by adherence to a com- 
mon political creed, were at first^ known 
simply as "Jackson men," a designation 
presently supplanted by that of Democrats, 
under which name the party has since had 
unbroken existence. A third party, the Anti- 
Masons, sprang up in New York in 1826-27, 
and spread with such rapidity in a few other 
States as to threaten for a time to become 
of national importance; but opposition to 
freemasonry proved too slight a basis for 
permanent influence, and in a few years 
the party disappeared. 

It was less a campaign of parties or prin- 
ciples, however, than of candidates. Increased 
appropriations for internal improvements, 
together with the "tariff of abominations," 
did, indeed, draw with greater sharpness 
the line between loose and strict construc- 
tionists; but the strength of the opposition 
lay, not in constitutional arguments, but 
in its comprehensive slogan "Hurrah for 
Jackson!" The electoral vote showed 178 
for Jackson against 83 for Adams. The 
popular vote, on the other hand, the only 
true gauge of public opinion, showed no 
such overwhelming preponderance. In a 
total vote of 1,155,340, Jackson received 



46 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

647,276. In Maine, New York, and Mary- 
land the electoral vote was divided; for the 
rest, the South and West, together with 
Pennsylvania, voted solidly for Jackson. 

From whatever point of view it might be 
regarded, the election was unquestionably 
a triumph for '*the people," whose candidate 
Jackson preeminently was. It remained 
to be seen whether "the people" could 
govern; whether the constitutional system 
of the United States, framed at a time when 
the limitation and direction of the popular 
will, rather than its unfettered expression, 
were deemed essential to an orderly conduct 
of affairs, would lend itself to the new demand 
for more direct initiative and control. Would 
it be possible for a President, swept into 
office by a great popular wave of mingled 
enthusiasm and revolt, to maintain respect 
for the Constitution, the laws, and the 
courts, safeguard the rights of capital and 
industry, resist encroachments of the States 
upon the proper sphere of federal authority, 
enlist in the service of the government those 
most competent for the task, and win for 
the country increasing respect among other 
nations, and at the same time retain the 
cooperation and esteem of *'the people".'^ 
Would the American democracy, led by a 
frontier soldier, permit government to be 
regarded as a serious business? 

In one direction, at least, the beginning 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 47 

was not hopeful. Jackson was scarcely 
seated in the presidential chair before the 
looting of the civil service began. Under 
Washington and John Adams appointments 
to office had, for the most part, fallen natu- 
rally to Federalists. The eight years of 
Jefferson's administration worked a pretty 
thorough reconstitution in personnel, but 
purely partisan removals were infrequent. 
Jackson, accepting without reserve the 
theory of "rotation in office," threw open 
the federal civil service to the spoilsmen. 
By December, 1829, when Congress met, 
it was estimated that a thousand removals 
had already been made. Neither age nor 
faithfulness nor financial need availed to 
retain an office if a supporter of the "old 
hero " wanted it. To Jackson the widespread 
demoralization of the federal service which 
ensued seems to have been a matter of in- 
difference; and upon him, more than upon 
any other President, must be placed the 
responsibility of giving to the spoils system 
a place in both the theory and the practice 
of American government. 

With something akin to a reign of terror 
inaugurated among the executive depart- 
ments at Washington, and in the post- 
offices and customs offices throughout the 
country, Jackson began an attack upon 
the Bank of the United States. Although 
badly mismanaged in its early years, the 



48 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

bank was now, under the presidency of 
Nicholas Biddle, in sound and prosperous 
condition. From the first, however, a 
powerful and aggressive opposition to the 
institution had shown itself. In 1819 the 
Supreme Court, in the case of McCulloch 
vs. Maryland, had upheld the constitution- 
ality of the bank; but the weight of Chief- 
Justice Marshall's decision had not sufficed 
to prevent persistent attempts, in many 
Southern and Western States, to tax the 
branches of the bank or even to prevent 
their operation altogether. As the greatest 
financial monopoly in the country, and one 
of the largest at the time in the world, the 
opponents of the bank denounced it as a 
menace to the freedom and purity of elec- 
tions; while the State banks, jealous of its 
privilege of note issue, and compelled to 
conduct their own business on equally safe 
lines, charged the Bank of the United States 
with unfriendliness to local interests and 
with catering to the "money power." 

At the end of his first annual message, 
in December, 1829, Jackson inserted two 
short paragraphs in which he declared that 
*'both the constitutionality and the expe- 
diency of the law creating this bank are 
well questioned by a large portion of our 
fellow-citizens," and that "the great end 
of establishing a uniform and sound cur- 
rency" had admittedly not been reaHzed. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 49 

The same charges, somewhat amplified, 
were repeated in the message of 1830. 
Beyond an investigation and a report sus- 
taining the bank, Congress paid no atten- 
tion to either message. The charter of the 
bank did not expire until 1836, nearly two 
years and a half after the term for which 
Jackson had been elected. The bank would 
doubtless apply for a renewal of its privileges, 
but for the consideration of that question 
the time seemed ample. 

In a brief paragraph in his annual message 
of 1831, Jackson declared that, having 
"conscientiously discharged a constitutional 
duty," he deemed it proper to leave the 
question "for the present," without further 
argument, "to the investigation of an en- 
lightened people and their representatives." 
In the light of what presently took place the 
words have an ominous significance, but 
they were generally taken as indicative 
of an intention to drop the matter. Biddle, 
the president of the banlc, rashly chose the 
moment as an opportune time to bring the 
question of a re-charter before Congress. A 
bill substantially identical with the existing 
law, but with provision for a bonus of 
$3,000,000, payable in fifteen annual install- 
ments, instead of the original bonus of 
$1,500,000, xjassed Congress in July by small 
majorities. 

To the consternation of Biddle and his 



50 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

friends, Jackson vetoed the bilL The veto 
message attacked the bank as a monopoly, 
for whose exchisive privileges no adequate 
return was made to either the people or the 
government, and as a menace to the busi- 
ness of the country and to politics. In a 
memorable passage, better indicative, per- 
haps, than anything he ever uttered of his 
attitude towards the Constitution and the 
courts, Jackson brushed aside the conten- 
tion that the constitutionality of the bank 
ought to be regarded as settled now that 
the Supreme Court had affirmed it; and 
claimed for the executive an unrestrained 
right, independent of either legislature or 
judiciary, to judge what was constitutional 
and what was not. The majorities in Con- 
gress in favor of the bank were not sufficient 
to pass the bill over the veto, and it failed. 

In vetoing the bank bill Jackson had 
taken the bold step of throwing the bank 
question as an issue into the presidential 
campaign of 1832. His triumphant reelec- 
tion in November was interpreted as a 
vindication of his course, and a popular 
condemnation of the financial policy which 
the alliance between the government and 
the bank embodied. 

He now proceeded to complete the work 
of separation. Convinced, both^ by the 
general policy of the bank and by its course 
immediately following the veto, that the 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 51 

institution was unsound, he called upon his 
Secretary of the Treasury, McLane, in May, 
1833, to remove from the bank and its 
branches the federal deposits. When Mc- 
Lane refused, he was "kicked upstairs" 
and made Secretary of State, and Duane 
appointed in his place. In September 
Jackson read to the cabinet an elaborate 
statement of his reasons for desiring the 
removal of the deposits, and pointed out 
that the members of the cabinet, though in 
no way bound to do anything which they 
believed to be illegal or which their con- 
sciences condemned, were nevertheless bound, 
if they continued? in office, to cooperate with 
the President in carrying out his policy. 

Duane was opposed to the bank; but since 
he did not believe the bank to be unsound, 
and was convinced that the removal of the 
deposits under the circumstances would be 
unlawful, he refused to issue the necessary 
orders and also refused to resign. He was 
accordingly dismissed. His successor, Taney, 
later chief -justice of the Supreme Court, and 
the principal author of the paper read to the 
cabinet, took the action desired. The govern- 
ment moneys were withdrawn, and there- 
after deposits were made in selected State 
banks under carefully guarded contracts. 

In December the annual message of the 
President, and the accompanying report of 
Taney, informed Congress of the steps that 



52 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

had been taken; but a copy of the cabinet 
paper, called for by the Senate, was refused, 
although the paper had already been pub- 
lished. After a debate which extended over 
more than three months, the Senate, on 
March 28, 1834, adopted resolutions con- 
demning Taney's statement of reasons as 
*' unsatisfactory and insufficient," and de- 
claring that the President, "in the late 
executive proceedings in relation to the 
public revenue, has assumed upon himself 
authority and power not conferred by the 
Constitution and laws, but in derogation of 
both." 

Against the resolution of censure Jackson, 
in a vigorous message, protested; but the 
Senate by formal resolutions charged him 
with further usurpation of authority, de- 
nied the right of protest, and refused to 
enter the message upon its journal. There- 
upon Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, 
Jackson's leading spokesman in the Senate, 
announced his intention "to introduce, at 
each succeeding session, a motion to expunge 
the resolution of censure from the journal 
until the desired action was taken or his 
own public career ended." January 16, 
1837, after two unsuccessful attempts, the 
victory was won. The manuscript journal 
of the session of 1833-34 was brought into 
the Senate, and the Secretary drew black 
lines around the censuring resolution and 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 53 

wrote across its face, "in strong letters," 
the triumphant words, "Expunged by order 
of the Senate, this sixteenth day of January, 
in the year of our Lord 1837." To Benton 
it was, like Cromwell's destruction of the 
Scottish army at Worcester, "a crowning 
mercy." 

It would be a mistake to suppose that 
Jackson's attack upon the Bank of the 
United States was due entirely to hostility 
to that institution as such. Jackson's 
ideas of public finance were hardly more 
than elementary. His hostility was directed 
against banks in general, rather than against 
any particular bank; and when, to a bank 
as representing the "money power," there 
was added the element of a great monopoly, 
the argument was, in his judgment, complete. 
That his method was aggressive and forcible 
to the point of brutality does not weaken 
the general soundness of his contentions; 
for the bank, with all its usefulness, had 
unquestionably become a menace. 

Jackson could hardly have challenged the 
bank with confidence in 1832 had he not, 
by that time, become the absolute master 
of his party. His first cabinet was not a 
strong one; and in 1831 a quixotic attempt 
to compel the ladies of the cabinet to receive 
Mrs. Eaton, wife of the Secretary of War, 
regarding whose early character suspicions 
had been rife, broke it up. Van Buren by 



54 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

good fortune retained Jackson's regard, and 
was presently nominated minister to Eng- 
land. He proceeded to his post in Septem- 
ber, only to learn in February, 1832, that 
the Senate had rejected his nomination. 
The rejection helped rather than injured 
his political prospects. Jackson had al- 
read}^ determined upon Van Buren as his 
political heir, and the program was now 
carried through with relentless energy. In 
spite of bitter hostihty to Van Buren because 
of his political methods, the Democratic 
national convention — the first held by the 
party — was compelled to accept him as the 
candidate for Vice-President. 

Jackson had already been endorsed by so 
many legislatures and other bodies that 
the convention of 1831 had nothing to do save 
to concur in the renominations. The election 
was a great Democratic victory. Jackson 
received 219 electoral votes against 49 for 
Clay, his Whig opponent. The popular 
vote showed 687,502 and 530,189 for the 
two candidates respectively. 

While Van Buren, the "little magician," 
shone brighter and brighter in the reflected 
light of his chief, the stars in their courses 
seemed to conspire against Calhoun. In 
1824, and again in 1828, he had given way 
to Jackson and accepted the office of Vice- 
President, meantime carrying in his breast 
the uneasy memory of a certain cabinet 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 55 

meeting, in 1818, at which he had urged that 
Jackson be court-martialed for his invasion 
of Florida. When, in 1830, Jackson learned 
of that episode, friendly relations between 
the two men were at an end; while the popu- 
lar demand for the reelection of Jackson 
forced Calhoun not only to give up the 
vice-presidency, which he could not hope 
to hold for a third term even if he wished, 
but also to face the loss of the presidency. 

Close on the heels of the election came the 
nullification outburst in South Carolina. 
The tariff act of July 14, 1832, did indeed 
temper some of the excesses of the "black 
tariff" of 1828, but at the same time showed 
no abandonment of protection as a prin- 
ciple. A divided vote in New England and 
the South was more than offset by solid 
support in the Middle, Western, and South- 
western States. Six weeks later Calhoun, 
now thoroughly converted to the strict con- 
struction view of the Constitution, set forth, 
in an elaborate letter to Governor Hamilton 
of South Carolina, "the final and classical 
exposition of the theory of Statei^sovereignty." 
On the 22d of October the Legislature of 
South Carolina met in extra session, and 
four days later called a convention to nullify 
the tariff laws. 

The convention met November 19, and 
on the 24th issued the famous Ordinance of 
Nullification. In the name of the people 



56 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

of the State, the ordinance declared the 
tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 to be unauthor- 
ized by the Federal Constitution, and "null, 
void, and no law"; forbade the collection 
of the duties within the State; and threat- 
ened secession in case the United States 
should in any manner attempt coercion. 
An oath to support the ordinance was pre- 
scribed for all State officers, civil and 
military. 

Jackson had not been an indifferent 
spectator of these extraordinary proceed- 
ings. Friends kept him fully informed of 
what was going on, and the army and navy 
were in readiness. His annual message of 
December 4 made only brief allusion to 
what had transpired. Six days later, how- 
ever, he issued a proclamation that fell 
with stunning effect upon the ears of the 
nullifiers. With elaborate and cogent argu- 
ment, and in a vigorous tone not to be mis- 
understood, he denounced the doctrine of 
nullification as "incompatible with the exis- 
tence of the Union, contradicted expressly 
by the letter of the Constitution, unauthor- 
ized by its spirit, inconsistent with every 
principle on which it was founded, and 
destructive of the great object for which it 
was formed." The nullifiers had appar- 
ently assumed that Jackson's lukewarmness 
towards protection would lead him to acqui- 
esce in an attack upon the Constitution and 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 57 

the authority of the federal government; 
but they had reckoned without their host. 

Governor Hayne issued a counter-proc- 
lamation, and the adjutant-general of 
South Carolina called for volunteers. In 
January, 1833, Jackson sent to Congress a 
special message, and asked for the legisla- 
tion necessary to enforce the revenue laws. 
Fortunately, perhaps, for both parties, the 
forces of compromise were already at work. 
A bill to reduce the tariff, introduced in the 
House December 27, made progress in spite 
of protectionist opposition; a "force bill" 
providing for the collection of duties appeared 
in the Senate; resolutions of State legis- 
latures condemned nullification and upheld 
Jackson; and Virginia offered friendly medi- 
ation. On the 21st of January a public 
meeting at Charleston assumed to suspend 
the ordinance for the time being, and in 
February the convention was reconvened 
for March 11. 

Before the expiration of the session, 
March 4, Congress had held out both the 
olive branch and the sword. A compromise 
tariff, mainly the work of Clay, provided 
for a gradual reduction of duties during the 
ensuing nine years until a twenty per cent 
level was reached. If Clay's course as the 
leading champion of protection was incon- 
sistent, it at least prevented a rupture, and 
perhaps saved the protective system from 



58 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

destruction then and there. On the other 
hand, the act for enforcing the tariff gave 
the President ample and much needed powers 
for the forcible collection of duties when 
necessary. The South Carolina convention 
adopted an ordinance nullifying the "force 
bill," but repealed the former ordinance of 
nullification. Calhoun, meantime, had re- 
signed the untenable office of Vice-President 
and been elected United States senator. 

Apparently the greater victory rested 
with South Carolina. The theory of nulli- 
fication had, indeed, been condemned, and 
the authority of the federal government in 
the collection of customs duties asserted. 
But the protective tariff had been radically 
modified, and it was against protection that 
South Carolina had taken its stand. The 
nullification episode checked for the moment 
the growth of nationalism, emphasized sec- 
tional divergence, and once more made 
State rights and strict construction a prac- 
tical political dogma. 

Jackson had little regard for consistency. 
In the same year in which he read a lesson in 
constitutional law to South Carolina, he 
allowed Georgia to defy the Supreme Court 
of the United States and seize the rich 
lands of the Cherokee Indians, over which 
Chief -Justice Marshall, in an elaborate decis- 
ion, had held that the State had no juris- 
diction. Jackson disliked Marshall and 



* 
^ 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 59 

was not unwilling to see him humiliated; 
and he was doubtless influenced also by 
his belief that the Indians, though entitled 
to humane and just treatment, must not 
be allowed to impede the progress of civili- 
zation by stubborn refusal to sell their lands. 

The same inconsistency appeared in the 
treatment of diplomatic questions, albeit 
that in two important controversies the 
record was one of success. In 1830 the 
lucrative trade with the British West Indies, 
from which Americans had been excluded 
by the English navigation acts ever since 
1783, was opened on favorable terms. In 
1836 France was compelled to provide for 
the payment of claims which dated back 
to 1800. Similar claims against Spain, 
Denmark, and the Two Sicilies were also 
adjusted. On the other hand, the United 
States flagrantly ignored its obligations as 
a neutral in the war between Mexico and 
Texas, although Jackson urged caution in 
the recognition by Congress of Texan inde- 
pendence. 

In one direction only did Jackson unwit- 
tingly prepare calamity for his successor. 
Contrary to the prediction of friends of the 
Bank of the United States, the removal of 
the deposits was not at once followed by 
financial disorder. The "pet banks," while 
using the government deposits as security 
for note issues, were cautious. Various 



60 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

causes, however, operated to bring on the 
familiar characteristics of a speculative 
period. The national debt was practically 
extinguished in 1835, and the compromise 
tariff, which could not be disturbed, began 
to produce a surplus. Capital was abundant 
in both the United States and Europe, 
canals facilitated the expansion of commerce, 
and the era of railroad building had begun. 
Even the States were incited to extrava- 
gance by an act of June 23, 1836, under 
which, in connection with the regulation 
of the deposits, provision was made for 
distributing the surplus revenue among the 
States. 

The most striking illustration of the spread 
of the speculative fever appeared in the 
sales of public lands in the West. Receipts 
from lands rose from $4,857,000 in 1834 to 
$24,877,000 in 1836. Although by law 
payments for lands could be made only in 
gold or silver (the latter not then in active 
circulation), or in notes of specie-paying 
banks, the extraordinary expansion of credit 
in the West, with the consequent increased 
demand for paper money, caused a large 
part of the payments to be in fact made in 
State bank notes, the specie value of which 
was uncertain. In June, 1836, the deposit 
banks, with gross liabilities, including capi- 
tal and circulation, of $144,600,000, held 
only $10,400,000 in specie. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 61 

When, therefore, the specie circular of 
July 11 directed the receipt, after August 
15, in payment for lands, of nothing save 
gold or silver, or, in certain cases, unim- 
portant Virginia land scrip, a wholesale 
curtailment of loans became necessary. To 
this was added the necessity of providing 
specie to the amount of the surplus revenue, 
the distribution of which began in January, 
1837. The outcome of the disorder, taken 
in connection with the climax of speculation 
and the disastrous failure of crops in 1835 
and 1837, was the severe financial panic 
which befell the country in the spring of the 
latter year. 

Jackson, having dictated the choice of 
Van Buren for Vice-President in 1832, had 
early determined to elevate him to the 
presidency in 1836. The opposition, which 
since 1834 had taken the name of Whigs, 
was as yet loosely knit, and in the face of 
Jackson's aggressive course could do little 
more than denounce the "usurpation" of 
the executive. The continued hostility to 
Van Buren within the Democratic ranks, 
on the other hand, made it wise to insure 
an early nomination. In May, 1835, a 
subservient convention at Baltimore unani- 
mously nominated him for President, with 
Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky as his 
associate on the ticket. 

The Whigs, by nominating strong local 



62 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

candidates, sought to throw the election 
into the House of Representatives. ^^ The 
Pennsylvania Whigs supported William 
Henry Harrison of Ohio, also the nominee 
of the Anti-Masons; Ohio supported Judge 
John McLean; Massachusetts nominated 
W^ebster. But the Democrats, superior alike 
in organization and in popular strength, 
carried the day. The popular majority for 
Van Buren was small, but the electoral 
vote stood 170 for Van Buren and 73 for 
Harrison, the nearest competitor. There 
was no choice for Vice-President by the 
electors, and the Senate, exercising its con- 
stitutional function in such a case for the 
only time thus far in our history, chose 
Johnson. 

Jackson issued a farewell address, and 
at the close of his term retired, a triumphant 
popular hero, to his home at the "Hermit- 
age," near Nashville, where he died in 
1845. He had saved the presidential oflBce 
from threatened eclipse by Congress, up- 
held the authority of the Union, waged 
successful w^ar against privilege and monop- 
oly, vitalized a national party, and brought 
"the people" into their own. Twenty- 
four years were to pass before the presiden- 
tial chair was filled by a man at all com- 
parable to him in native ability, political 
wisdom, or sure popular hold. 



CHAPTER IV 

SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 
1815-1840 

While the new democracy, under the 
leadership of Jackson, was destroying the 
Bank of the United States, shaking the hold 
of the old political aristocracy, and forcing 
a reorganization of parties and a restate- 
ment of party creeds, there was arising in 
the North a new and formidable demand for 
the abolition of slavery. 

The institution of negro slavery had under- 
gone in the United States a long and some- 
what varied development. Beginning in 
1619 with the landing of a few negroes in 
Virginia, it grew but slowly during the 
colonial period, save in South Carolina. 
Throughout most of the seventeenth cen- 
tury it was closely rivaled by the system of 
indentured white servitude. In the first 
half of the eighteenth century it was sus- 
tained less by settled conviction of its inhe- 
rent goodness or economic profitableness 
than by a steady stream of fresh impor- 
tations directly encouraged by the English 

63 



64 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

crown. In 1774 the first Continental Con- 
gress declared against further importations, 
not so much because of moral opposition to 
the trade as because prohibition would be 
a serious blow at the mother country. 

In the meantime natural conditions of 
soil and climate had operated to confine 
slavery mainly to the South, where the 
production of tobacco, cotton, and rice as 
staples constituted almost the sole interest 
of agriculture, and where malaria and sum- 
mer heat made it difficult for whites to labor 
in the field. By the time of the adoption 
of the Federal Constitution, in 1787, negro 
slavery had long since ceased to be of much 
importance in the North, and had either 
been abolished by State constitutions or 
laws, or was in process of complete extinc- 
tion by various methods of gradual emanci- 
pation. On the other hand,^ the growing 
profitableness of slave labor in the South, 
with the consequent increase in the number 
of slaves, strengthened the demand for 
the preservation of the system; and the 
Federal Convention of 1787, in framing the 
Constitution, was forced to accept compro- 
mises by which three-fifths of the slaves 
were to be counted, in addition to whites, 
for the purpose of determining the member- 
ship of the House of Representatives; 
while the slave trade was shielded from 
national interference for twenty years. 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 65 

From time to time organized moral op- 
position to slavery, coupled with demands 
for abolition, appeared in the North, and 
awakened sympathetic interest in the South, 
especially in Virginia. A vigorous agitation 
of the question in Massachusetts was checked 
by the coming on of the Revolutionary 
struggle. In New York and Pennsylvania 
abolition was persistently urged by numerous 
societies, in whose work the Quakers were 
particularly active. In 1790 there came 
before Congress memorials from abolition 
societies in New York and Philadelphia, of 
the latter of which Benjamin Franklin was 
president, praying for the abolition of the 
slave trade. In replying to the petitions 
Congress laid down the principles by which 
it was to be governed for the next seventy 
years: declaring by resolution that the 
slave trade could not be interfered with 
until 1808, although humane conditions 
during the ocean passage could be enforced; 
and that the treatment of slaves in this 
country, together with their emancipation, 
were matters solely for State control. 

With the invention of the cotton-gin, 
in 1793, it became for the first time possible 
to put American cotton on the market in 
large quantities. A slave could now "gin," 
or clean of seed and chaff, some hundreds of 
pounds of cotton in a day; and the pro- 
duction of cotton grew apace. Before the 



66 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

War of 1812 population from Virginia, the 
Carolinas, and Georgia had overflowed into 
the rich "cotton belt" of Alabama and Mis- 
sissippi; while the wasteful methods of 
slave labor, and the unprogressive state of 
Southern agriculture as a whole, increased 
the demand for fresh cultivable land. Not 
all the slaveholding States, indeed, were 
adapted to cotton culture. Virginia and 
Maryland still relied mainly upon tobacco, 
and Kentucky was growing hemp. The 
increased demand for labor in the lov/er 
South, however, opened a market for the 
surplus slaves of the Border States, and 
that section accordingly joined with the 
North in prohibiting the foreign slave trade 
after January 1, 1808. The act was not 
genuinely enforced, nor did importations 
cease when, in 1820, the slave trade was 
declared piracy. 

Even in the South, however, opposition 
to slavery did not die. In 1816 there was 
formed the American Colonization Society, 
having for its object the deportation to 
Africa of such emancipated negroes as were 
willing to go. For a number of years the 
society enjoyed much favor. Madison and 
Clay were numbered among its presidents, 
slaveholders subscribed to its funds, and 
a few States made grants in aid. The 
existence of the society testified to an 
uneasy feeling that slavery was indefensible. 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 67 

and that the presence of free negroes in a slave 
region was a menace to the institution. 
The society never accompHshed any impor- 
tant results, however, since the imported 
slaves far outnumbered those who were colo- 
nized. At best, its work was hardly more 
than a feeble apology for slavery. 

The Missouri Compromise brought for 
the first time to national expression the 
feeling of apprehension with which the con- 
tinued growth of slavery was regarded. 
Only indirectly, indeed, was the legislation 
of 1820 a declaration of hostility to slavery 
as such, for the reason that the compromise 
did not concern itself with the status of 
slavery in any State in which it had hitherto 
existed. But by the exclusion of slavery 
from the Louisiana purchase north of 36° 
30', Congress registered the decision of a 
majority of the people that the slavehold- 
ing area should be restricted, and that the 
larger part of the national domain should 
forever remain free. The compromise thus 
stamped slavery as a "peculiar institu- 
tion," put it on the defensive, and limited the 
field of its development. 

The period from 1816 to 1832 marks also 
a change in the attitude of the South on the 
question. So long as a protectivejtariff could 
be conceived of as diffusing its benefits 
throughout the country, wdiether a parti- 
cular section or industry were directly 



68 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

aided or not, the South faced with satis- 
faction the coming of an increased pros- 
perity and a new industriahsm. But when 
the tariffs of 1824 and 1828, though multi- 
plying factories in the North, brought to 
the South no enhanced price of cotton com- 
mensurate with the enhanced prices of 
manufactured goods, the South rapidly cut 
loose from protection as unconstitutional 
and visionary, and fell back upon agricul- 
ture as the industry for which nature had 
fitted it. To devotion to cotton was thus 
joined advocacy of slavery; while the fact 
that the opposition to protection was almost 
entirely confined to the South added to the 
strength of the economic and political argu- 
ment the weight of geographical unity. 

After 1820, too, the opposition of the 
North declined. Southern planters sent 
their sons to Northern colleges, contributed 
to Northern churches and missionary soci- 
eties, and spent money freely at Northern 
summer resorts. Throughout the North 
slavery had by this time disappeared, and 
free negroes were few. Antislavery soci- 
eties ceased to be active, and the churches 
became silent. In New England the popu- 
lation, drawn on the one hand to the towns 
and cities by the growth of the factory 
system, and on the other to the West by the 
abundance of cheap land,^ was rapidly 
changing in character and distribution. A 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 69 

new literature was arising, new intellectual 
interests were developing, and new social 
problems pressed for solution. 

It was under such circumstances that 
William Lloyd Garrison launched his abo- 
lition crusade. 

Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1805. He became a printer, 
and in 1829 entered the employ of Benjamin 
Lundy, a Quaker, at Baltimore, who had 
been publishing since 1821 an antislavery 
paper called the "Genius of Universal 
Emancipation." In the absence of Lundy, 
Garrison blew a blast against slavery which 
roused the city against him, and presently 
forced his withdrawal. Returning to Boston, 
he issued in January, 1831, the first number 
of the Liberator. In bold and uncompro- 
mising language he proclaimed his opposition 
to slavery in every form, and his purpose 
to agitate unceasingly for its abolition. 
"I will be as harsh as truth and as uncom- 
promising as justice. ... I am in earnest — 
I will not equivocate — I will not excuse 
— I will not retreat a single inch — and I 
will he heard.'* 

In 1832 the New England Antislavery 
Society was formed, followed in 1833 by 
the American Antislavery Society. The 
constitution of the latter society, while 
admitting the right of each State in which 
slavery existed to determine whether or not 



70 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

it should be abolished, nevertheless de- 
nounced slaveholding as "a heinous crime 
in the sight of God," demanded its "im- 
mediate abandonment without expatria- 
tion," and declared against the domestic 
slave trade. As to the negroes themselves, 
the constitution framed this memorable 
platform: "This Society shall aim to elevate 
the character and condition of the people 
of color, by encouraging their intellectual, 
moral, and religious improvement, and by 
removing public prejudice, that thus they 
may, according to their intellectual and 
moral worth, share an equality with the 
whites of civil and religious privileges; but 
this Society will never, in any way, coun- 
tenance the oppressed in vindicating their 
rights by resorting to physical force." 

Before long the aggressive vigor of the 
Abolitionists, energized and directed by 
Garrison and his Liberator, brought the 
inevitable persecution. A school for young 
ladies at Canterbury, Connecticut, kept by 
Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quakeress, was 
broken up by the townspeople because Miss 
Crandall admitted a colored pupil. The 
citizens of Canaan, New Hampshire, voted 
that the academy in that town should be 
"removed" for similar reason; and ropes 
and oxen carried the vote into effect. In 
October, 1835, a gentlemanly mob in Boston 
dragged Garrison through the streets with a 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 71 

halter about his neck, tearing his clothes and 
insulting him, until the mayor had him 
rescued and lodged in jail for safekeeping. 
In December, 1837, a mob at Alton mur- 
dered Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of an 
abolition paper, and destroyed his press 
and threw the fragments into the river. 
When, a few days later, at a great meeting 
in Faneuil Hall, Boston, the attorney- 
general of the Commonwealth apologized 
for the mob, Wendell Phillips, then a young 
man of twenty-six, turned upon him with 
the eloquent but withering reply: "Sir, for 
the sentiments he has uttered, ouj soil con- 
secrated by the prayers of Puritans and 
the blood of patriots, the earth should have 
yawned and swallowed him up." Abolition 
had found its orator. 

Comprising, as they did for some years, 
mainly radical reformers, and drawing in 
their train enthusiasts and visionaries of 
many stripes, it was inevitable that the 
Abolitionists should have to meet all sorts 
of false or ignorant accusations. A formida- 
ble slave insurrection in Virginia, under 
Nat Turner, in 1831, was ascribed to their 
influence. They were charged with favoring 
the amalgamation of the races: a thing 
which Southern spokesmen affected to regard 
as unspeakably odious, notwithstanding that 
the increase of the mulatto population, the 
result of illicit unions, was notorious through- 



72 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

out the South. The charge that slavery 
was being attacked by unconstitutional 
means Garrison persistently denied, and 
with at least a semblance of justification. 
In his view the Constitution could not right- 
fully uphold the nation in sin; and if slavery 
was constitutional, then the Constitution 
was not so much to be violated as to be 
ignored. 

What caused the greatest irritation in 
the South, however, was the circulation of 
abolition literature in that region by mail. 
The matter was a difficult one to deal with 
in a federal government, and the consti- 
tutional guarantee of freedom of the press 
was one not lightly to be invaded. In July, 
1835, the mails were rifled at Charleston 
and a quantity of alleged abolition literature 
was destroyed. When the postmaster at 
New York applied to the Postmaster-General, 
Amos Kendall, for instructions, he was 
informed that while he could not lawfully 
refuse to receive abolition mail, he was not 
bound to forward it. In his annual message 
of December, 1835, Jackson urged upon 
Congress the exclusion from the mails of 
publications tending to incite slave insur- 
rections, and Calhoun did his best to attach 
a detention proviso to the postoffice appro- 
priation bill; but, fortunately for the good 
name of the United States, his efforts failed. 

In addition to organizing abolition soci- 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 73 

eties throughout the North, holding innu- 
merable public meetings, and issuing news- 
papers and pamphlets, the Abolitionists 
early began systematically to petition Con- 
gress. With regard to the domestic and for- 
eign slave trade and the status of slavery in 
the Territories and the District of Columbia, 
the power of Congress was complete; and 
before long a stream of memorials on these 
subjects, as well as on the general question 
of slavery, began to pour into the House of 
Representatives. John Quincy Adams, who 
in 1831 had been elected a member of the 
House, championed the right of the peti- 
tioners to have the memorials received and 
read. 

The temper of the Southern members 
passed rapidly from irritation to anger. 
In the session of 1835-36 a great attack 
upon slavery by William Slade of Vermont, 
together with the demand by Adams that 
the petitions be not only received and read, 
but referred to a committee for consideration, 
threw the House into turmoil. The excite- 
ment was temporarily laid by the adoption, 
in May, 1836, of a resolution submitted by 
Pinckney of South Carolina, directing that 
all petitions and other papers relating in any 
way to slavery "shall, without being printed 
or referred, be laid upon the table, and that 
no further action whatever shall be had 
thereon." In February, 1837, Adams pre- 



74 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

sented a petition signed by some twenty 
slaves, and again threw the House into a 
panic by inquiring whether the petition 
came under the rule. When, after angry 
discussion, he announced that the petition 
was against abolition, not in favor of it, an 
attempt was made to censure him for out- 
raging the dignity of the House; but the 
question was finally disposed of by a resolu- 
tion declaring that slaves did not possess 
the right of petition. 

The adoption of a "gag rule" served only 
to swell the number of antislavery petitions, 
and to call out from New England legis- 
latures protests against the rule as uncon- 
stitutional. The majority in the House was 
not disposed to stop, however, and in 1840 
took the final step of refusing to receive any 
more petitions against slavery, or to enter- 
tain them "in any way whatever." The 
essence of the right of petition is the right 
to have the petition read. If that be denied 
the right becomes only an empty form. The 
House of Representatives had now violated 
that right. What counted quite as much, 
moreover, in the public mind was the fact 
that the open denial of a constitutional 
guarantee was made on behalf of slavery. 

An eminent constitutional authority ^ has 
afiSrmed that "it would not be extravagant 
to say that the whole course of the inter- 

1 Burgess, The Middle Period, 274. 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 75 

nal history of the United States from 1836 
to 1861 was more largely determined by the 
struggle in Congress over the abolition peti- 
tions and the use of the mails for the distri- 
bution of the abolition literature than by 
anything else." It made abolition a polit- 
ical issue and prepared the way for the for- 
mation of an antislavery party. It revealed 
to the nation the growth of sectionalism, 
notwithstanding the sweeping progress of 
Jacksonian democracy; and forced the 
South to fight for the continuance of equal 
representation of the sections in the Senate, 
upon which the maintenance of slavery 
depended. On the other hand, it doubtless 
increased in the South the fear of slave 
insurrection, and led to more rigorous 
treatment of the negroes; but it was clear 
that increased severity, once the fact were 
generally appreciated, would carry its own 
condemnation. 

In contrast to the situation in later years, 
abolition at first was not a question on which 
public men hesitated to take sides. Jackson 
was not, apparently, much concerned about 
the subject, but he condemned the circu- 
lation of abolition literature in slave States, 
and in his farewell address pointed with 
gloomy foreboding to the danger of continu- 
ing the agitation. Clay and Calhoun were 
outspoken in opposition — the latter bitterly 
and aggressively so, the former more because 



76 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

colonization and compromise appeared to be 
the better solution. Webster, alone among 
the great men of the time, avoided the issue 
whenever possible, especially during the 
years in which presidential ambitions in- 
creasingly influenced him; but at least he 
could hardly be reckoned a supporter of 
slavery. 

On the other hand, the Abolitionists 
failed to attract a large following. With 
some notable exceptions, their leaders and 
active supporters were radical reformers, 
zealous for righteousness but without politi- 
cal prominence. Many who sympathized 
with abolition as an ultimate result, and who 
were willing to go a long way to bring it 
about, were repelled by the strenuous meth- 
ods and extreme utterances of Garrison and 
his followers. It was the work of the Abo- 
litionists, rather, to sow the seed of moral 
and political regeneration whose harvest 
others were to reap, and to inaugurate a 
movement which others were to systematize 
and direct. Politically they saved others, 
but themselves they could not save. 

As a party, the Abolitionists never at- 
tained national importance. The national 
convention system which developed after 
1830, with its delegates, its platforms, and 
its official nomination of candidates, was 
favorable to the formation of new parties; 
but those who bore the abolition name were 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 77 

too few to derive much profit from it. In 
1839 a Liberty party nominated James G. 
Birney of New York, a former slaveholder 
but later an abolition leader, for the presi- 
dency; but only 7000 votes were polled in a 
total of over 2,400,000. The Democratic 
platform in 1840 denounced abolition as a 
movement which "ought not to be counte- 
nanced by any friend to our political 
institutions." In 1843 the Liberty party 
again nominated Birney, and adopted a 
platform which, in addition to its denun- 
ciation of slavery, sought to identify the 
party with the principles of human brother- 
hood, "pure Christianity," and "the true 
spirit of the Constitution of the United 
States." The Democrats and Whigs, en- 
tangled with the question of the annexation 
of Texas, avoided the slavery issue alto- 
gether in their platforms of that year; but 
although the popular vote for Birney rose 
to 62,000, that number was not sufficient 
to secure any electoral votes. Thereafter 
the Abolitionists as such cast no separately 
recorded vote in presidential elections. 

Radical and outspoken as it was in its 
methods, involved almost from the first 
in controversies with the government and 
the established social order, and unsuited 
for organized political action, the cause of 
abolition was nevertheless greatly helped 
by the general reforming spirit of the time. 



78 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

In New England the Unitarian movement, 
breaking with the dominant theology of 
Congregationalism, made its w^ay rapidly 
after 1815, and was one of the chief factors 
in bringing about in Massachusetts, in 1833, 
the^ final separation of church and state. 
A similar divorce had been attained in Con- 
necticut in 1818. In the Middle States and 
the West the spread of Methodism was 
attended by great religious revivals, stirring 
to spiritual fervor whole communities and 
preparing the way for the later enthrone- 
ment of moral issues in politics. Between 
abolition and the churches there was, to be 
sure, little formal sympathy and much open 
hostility; but in this as in so many other 
cases, persecution and neglect ultimately 
helped the cause. 

The decade from 1830 to 1840 saw also 
the rise or marked development of the 
temperance or total abstinence movement, 
an increased interest in public education, 
and the establishment of institutions for 
the better treatment of criminals, insane, 
and defectives. Prison reform made hopeful 
progress; and although it was estimated in 
1833 that not less than 75,000 persons were 
annually imprisoned in the United States 
for debt,^ the case was better than it had 
been. A beginning was made in the separa- 

* McMaster, History of the People of the United States, 
VI, 99. 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 79 

tion of the insane from criminals, with whom 
they had usually been connned. 

Industrial development, too, was every- 
where working revolutionary changes, the 
moral and political signiucance of which 
was to appear as years went on. In New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania the 
rise of the factory system drew to the towns 
the young men and women of the country 
districts, thereby decreasing the supply of 
farm labor and, in consequence, the pro- 
ductivity of agriculture; and bringing in its 
train, by 1849, new problems of housing, 
sanitation, wages, child labor, and morals. 
For the first time in America wage-earning 
occupations on a considerable scale were 
opened to women. In addition, the building 
of railroads created a new demand for labor, 
both skilled and unskilled, not only for con- 
struction, but in the numerous trades or 
occupations which railroad building en- 
couraged, and in the handling of the freight 
and passenger business which the railroad 
developed. 

The demand for higher wages, shorter 
hours, the regulation of apprentices, free- 
dom of contract, and the right to combine 
for the attainment of better conditions, 
brought to the front the labor movement, 
which after 1825 made rapid progress. 
Occasional strikes and riots showed the 
uneasiness of the masses and a slowly grow- 



80 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

ing consciousness of power. On the other 
hand, a rapid increase in the volume of 
immigration, rising from 10,000 in 1825 
to 84,000 in 1840, led to clashing between 
natives and foreign-born, and contributed 
largely, after 1840, to drive native labor 
from the mills; while the fact that many 
who came were paupers, or what would 
now be called "assisted immigrants," brought 
to the cities of the Atlantic seaboard new 
problems of charity, education, and order. 

Economic ideals and social Utopias, also, 
were being exploited and discussed. Robert 
Owen's community at New Harmony, Indi- 
ana, in 1825; brook Farm at Roxbury (now 
a part of Boston), Massachusetts, in 1831, 
together with numerous cooperative enter- 
prises in other States, evidenced dissatis- 
faction with the wages system and a desire 
for a new and better industrial order. Time- 
honored social institutions like private prop- 
erty, and even the institution of marriage, 
were publicly attacked, as by Owen in his 
"Declaration of Mental Independence" in 
1826, and the lectures of Frances Wright in 
1828-29. The number of women operatives 
in factories gave strength to the demand for 
"women's rights," especially for freedom 
to speak in churches or public meetings, 
first voiced by the Abolitionists about 1840, 
and for independent control of earnings and 
property. 



SLAVERY AND ABOLITION 81 

^ Lastly, it should be noted that the aboli- 
tion movement coincides with the beginning 
of a period of notable literary development. 
The years after 1815 witnessed a great multi- 
plication of newspapers and magazines, 
both secular and religious, some of which, 
like the North American Review, ZiorCs 
Herald, and the New York Christian Advo- 
cate, had a circulation rivaling that of the 
foremost English periodicals. Among Amer- 
ican writers James Fenimore Cooper held 
the first place; Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, 
and Whittier were gaining an increasing 
audience; Bancroft and Sparks were laying 
the foundations for the study of American 
history; and Story and Kent had taken rank 
among the foremost legal authors. The 
first edition of Noah Webster's Dictionary 
appeared in 1828; while 1833 saw the estab- 
lishment of the first free public library in 
America, at Peterboro', New Hampshire, 
and 1837 Emerson's great Phi Beta Kappa 
address at Harvard on "The American 
Scholar." No time more opportune for a 
crusade against human slavery could possibly 
have been chosen than this period of intel- 
lectual and spiritual awakening. 



CHAPTER V 

TEXAS AND OREGON 

We have already seen how the Missouri 
Compromise of 1820, in its attempt at a 
permanent adjustment of the territorial 
claims of slavery, allotted to the North the 
larger part of the Louisiana acquisition, 
while restricting the South to the region out 
of which were eventually formed only the 
Indian Territory and the State of Arkansas. 
We have now to see how the demand for 
more slave territory, joined to the inevi- 
table expansion of the United States in the 
direction of natural boundaries, won com- 
pensation in the annexation of Texas. 

In 1803 the purchase of Louisiana trans- 
ferred to the United States the claims of 
France to territory west of the Mississippi. 
The western limits of Louisiana, whether 
as a Spanish or as a French province, had 
never been defined; and the language of 
the treaty, which, adopting the language of 
the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, in 1800, 
ceded "the colony or province of Louisiana, 
with the same extent that it now has in the 

82 



TEXAS AND OREGON 83 

hands of Spain, and that it had when France 
possessed it, and such as it should be after 
the treaties subsequently entered into be- 
tween Spain and other States," was vague 
and contradictory. 

The main point at issue in the later con- 
troversy was whether or not Louisiana, 
either as a French province or under previous 
Spanish rule, included any part of Texas. 
In 1819 the Florida treaty with Spain, nego- 
tiated on behalf of the United States by 
John Quincy Adams, fixed the Sabine River, 
the present eastern boundary of Texas, as 
the boundary between the United States 
and the Spanish possessions. There can be 
little doubt that Adams was in error, and 
unwittingly surrendered to Spain some terri- 
tory to which the United States had a valid 
claim; but he apparently acted in good faith, 
and it was some years before the question 
was again carefully examined. 

In 1821 the treaty of Cordova secured the 
independence of Mexico, and three years 
later a federal form of government was adop- 
ted, with Texas and Coahuila united as 
one of the States. In 1827 a Texan congress 
drew up a constitution, which was pro- 
claimed, prohibiting the further importation 
of slaves and providing for the gradual 
emancipation of slaves already there. In 
1828 a treaty between the United States and 
Mexico confirmed the boundary of 1819. 



84 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

The opposition in Texas to the foreign 
slave trade and slavery unfortunately coin- 
cided in time with the change of attitude 
in the South towards protection and State 
rights, and with the strong movement of 
population into the rich cotton lands of 
Alabama and Mississippi. The cotton belt 
reaches its greatest width in Texas, and the 
expansion of cotton culture throughout the 
whole of the natural cotton area was, of 
course, inevitable. With the entrance into 
Texas of Americans, many of whom, in 
spite of the Texan constitution, took their 
slaves with them, there arose before long 
in the South and Southwest a demand for 
annexation. 

In 1827 Clay, the Secretary of State, 
instructed the American minister to Mexico 
to offer a million dollars for the territory 
east of the Rio Grande River; but for 
various reasons the offer was not made. 
In 1829 Van Buren, Secretary of State under 
Jackson, authorized an offer of four or ^ve 
millions for the portion of Texas east of 
the Nueces River, but Mexico refused to 
consider a proposition to sell. 

The demand for annexation was not 
wholly economic, however. Texas was nearly 
four times the size of New England, and 
larger than Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. The 
acquisition of such an area, and its division 



TEXAS AND OREGON 85 

into four or five States, would effectually 
offset the territorial gain of the North in 
1820, and assure the maintenance of the 
indispensable balance between the sections 
in the Senate. 

Between Texas and the rest of the Mexican 
Republic, on the other hand, relations were 
not friendly. The first step towards inde- 
pendence was taken in 1833, when a new 
Texan constitution was framed; but as 
the constitution was not recognized by Mex- 
ico nor actually put into effect, the move- 
ment for the moment came to nothing. In 
1835, however, a provisional government 
was formed, with a provisional constitution, 
and the long war with Mexico began. On 
the 2d of March a declaration of independ- 
ence was issued, and two weeks later a con- 
stitution was established which recognized 
slavery and forbade the Congress of Texas 
to emancipate slaves, but at the same time 
prohibited the importation of slaves except 
from the United States. The boundary 
between Texas and the United States, as 
set forth in the constitution, was that of 
1819. The president of Mexico, Santa 
Anna, invaded Texas, butchered to a man 
the garrison at the Alamo mission, near San 
Antonio, and committed indescribable bar- 
barities; but in April he was defeated and 
taken prisoner by a Texan force under Sam 
Houston, the president of the new republic. 



86 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

There can be little doubt that the move- 
ment for independence, however acceptable 
to the Texans themselves, was materially 
aided by Americans resident in Texas. ^ The 
recognition of slavery, and the permission 
to import slaves from the United States 
only, were obviously intended to win Amer- 
ican, and especially Southern, support. 

In July, 1836, resolutions to recognize 
the independence of Texas were adopted 
by both houses of Congress. An angry- 
debate in the House over abolition peti- 
tions, ending in the adoption of the "gag" 
rule, had just closed; and the presidential 
election was at hand. As neither of the 
political parties adopted a platform in that 
year, a formal declaration of policy was 
avoided. In December Jackson, who had 
already sent an agent to investigate the 
situation, urged delay, and suggested that 
some other government might well be al- 
lowed to extend recognition first. At the 
same time he protested that the conduct of 
the United States had been beyond reproach. 
On this last point Jackson knew better. 
Throughout the summer newspapers had 
reported volunteers openly proceeding to 
Texas; Texan recruiting officers had carried 
on their work in the United States without 
interference; armed vessels had been fitted 
out in American waters; and American naval 
vessels had saluted Texan armed vessels 



TEXAS AND OEEGON 87 

as ships of war.^ At the end of June a United 
States force under General Gaines had ad- 
vanced into Texas, and in October the 
Mexican minister at Washington had de- 
manded his passports. 

The question of recognition was further 
comphcated by the existence of a considera- 
ble volume of claims against Mexico by 
the United States and its citizens. Robbery 
and imprisonment of Americans in Mexico, 
seizure of treasure in transit from the mines 
to the coast, capture and condemnation of 
American vessels, and insults offered to the 
American consul at Matamoras, were among 
the injuries complained of. In February, 
1837, his patience exhausted, Jackson recom- 
mended reprisals, and asked for authority 
to make one more demand for redress "from 
on board one of our vessels of war." Con- 
gress was not ready to go to v/ar, but on 
February 28 the House voted to pay the 
expenses of a diplomatic representative in 
Texas, and the next day the Senate adopted 
a resolution for the recognition of inde- 
pendence. This informal recognition by 
the United States was shortly followed by 
recognition on the part of Great Britain, 
France, and Belgium. In October, 1838, 
a treaty between the United States and 
Texas provided for marking the boundary. 

In August, 1837, Texas proposed annexa- 

1 Von Hoist, United States, II, 571-585. 



88 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

tion. The proposal was declined by For- 
syth, Secretary of State, partly on consti- 
tutional grounds and partly because of 
treaty obligations with Mexico. Save for 
the presentation in Congress of memorials 
on both sides of the question, no further 
action [was taken during Van Buren's 
term. 

The election of 1840 was a sweeping vic- 
tory for the Whigs, the Whig candidate 
for President, William Henry Harrison of 
Ohio, receiving 234 electoral votes against 
60 for Van Buren. The sudden death of 
Harrison, however, exactly one month after 
his inauguration, brought the Vice-President, 
John Tyler of Virginia, to the presidential 
chair. Tyler was in reality a strict construc- 
tion Democrat, whose claim to be regarded 
as a Whig rested upon no better ground 
than that of opposition to Van Buren and 
to certain elements in his own party. The 
inevitable breach was not long in appearing. 

A law establishing a subtreasury system, 
under which the federal government was 
to care for its own funds directly without 
the agency of banks, had been passed by 
Democratic votes in 1840. The Whigs, 
with a majority now in both houses of Con- 
gress, repealed the law, and Tyler signed the 
bill. This was interpreted to mean that 
Tyler favored the Whig policy of a national 
bank, and a bill to create a "fiscal bank" 



TEXAS AND OREGON 89 

was presently passed. Tyler, who as a 
member of Congress had been no friend to 
the Bank of the United States, vetoed the 
bill on constitutional grounds. 

After consultation with the President, 
another bank bill presumably in accordance 
with his views was passed, only to encounter 
another veto. Thereupon the Whig mem- 
bers of Congress, in addresses to the people, 
repudiated Tyler, and the cabinet, with the 
exception of Webster, Secretary of State, 
resigned. Only a small number of Whigs, 
known as the "corporal's guard," supported 
the President. Webster, who was busy with 
negotiations with Lord Ashburton over the 
long-standing northeastern boundary dis- 
pute, remained in oJBBce until the conclu- 
sion of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, in 
1842; then he tardily resigned, and subse- 
quently reentered the Senate. Tyler con- 
tinued his strict construction policy, vetoing 
two tariff bills, and compelling the abandon- 
ment of a scheme for the distribution of 
surplus revenue before the tariff of 1842 
finally received his approval. 

Meanwhile the slavery question continued 
to agitate Congress. In March, 1842, 
Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio was?censured by 
the House for offering in that body resolu- 
tions denying the right of the United States 
to reenslave negroes captured on the high 
seas, and reaffirming the doctrine of Lord 



90 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Mansfield in the Somerset case, in 1770, 
that slavery, "being an abridgment of 
the natural rights of man, can exist only by 
force of positive municipal law." Giddings 
at once resigned his seat, was triumphantly 
reelected, and resumed his seat in May. 

The question of Texas, too, was sim- 
mering. Tyler was known to be strongly 
in favor of annexation, the accomplishment 
of which would shed a much needed luster 
upon his administration; and apparently 
only the presence in his cabinet of Webster, 
who did not resign until May, 1843, stayed 
his hand. Already, in March, a number of 
antislavery members of Congress, headed 
by Adams, had issued an address warning 
the people of the North that annexation 
was imminent, and declaring that in their 
opinion such action would amount to a 
dissolution of the Union. 

No nation can long view with indifference 
the continuance of a civil war on its borders; 
and the war between Texas and Mexico, 
which had gone on since 1837, was becoming 
both desultory and devastating, and gave 
no indication of ultimate Mexican success. 
In his annual message of December, 1843, 
Tyler reviewed the progress of the war, 
declared bluntly that "it is time that this 
war had ceased," and made it clear that the 
United States would not be deterred from 
continued recognition of the independence 



TEXAS AND OREGON 91 

of Texas by any threats on the part of Mexico. 
Attention was also called to the fact that the 
overland trade with Santa Fe, in which 
considerable American capital was invested, 
had been interrupted, and that foreigners 
might shortly be excluded from the Mexican 
retail trade. 

From diplomatic correspondence accom- 
panying the message it appeared that the 
United States was apprehensive lest Great 
Britain should open negotiations with Texas 
for the abolition of slavery there. In a 
letter to Pakenham, the British minister 
at Washington, Lord Aberdeen denied such 
intention, "although," he added, "we shall 
not desist from those open and honest 
efforts which we have constantly made for 
procuring the abolition of slavery throughout 
the world." In view of the hostile attitude 
of Great Britain towards the North during 
the Civil War, the declaration of Lord 
Aberdeen at this time is interesting. 

xApril 22, 1844, Tyler submitted to the 
Senate a treaty for the annexation of Texas, 
concluded ten days previously. In trans- 
mitting a copy of the treaty to Edward 
Everett, the American minister at London, 
Calhoun, who had lately become Secretary 
of State, declared that annexation had been 
rendered necessary "by the condition in 
which the avowed policy of Great Britain, 
as proclaimed in Lord Aberdeen's dispatch, 



92 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

had placed the United States"; and that 
*'this government could not quietly fold its 
arms, while a policy was avowed and meas- 
ures adopted so fatal to the safety and pros- 
perity of the Union." The inseparable con- 
nection between annexation and slavery 
needed no more explicit avowal. 

The moment was both critical and em- 
barrassing. Tyler, in transmitting the treaty, 
not only claimed full authority to nego- 
tiate it, but also virtually assumed that 
Texas, having voluntarily accepted the 
treaty, was to be considered as already a 
part of the United States. The Senate was 
inclined to hold that the annexation of an 
independent state could be achieved only by 
act of Congress, and not by treaty. On the 
other hand, the submission of the treaty 
at this time made annexation, whether 
accompHshed or not, the preeminent issue 
in the presidential campaign of 1844. That 
Tyler was not lacking in political shrewd- 
ness was shown in May, when, with the 
treaty still under discussion in secret ses- 
sion, he sent to the Senate a letter from 
Jackson, in which the "old hero" declared 
that "the present golden moment to obtain 
Texas must not be lost, or Texas might 
from necessity be thrown into the arms of 
England and be forever lost to the United 
States." 

Jackson's letter was communicated about 



TEXAS AND OREGON 93 

four weeks after Clay, in a letter on the same 
subject, had opposed annexation at the 
present time "as a measure compromising 
the national character, involving us certainly 
in a war with Mexico, probably with other 
foreign powers, dangerous to the integrity 
of the Union, inexpedient in the present 
financial condition of the country, and not 
called for by any general expression of 
public opinion." Clay hoped for the Whig 
nomination, and his letter pleased the North. 
Van Buren, coveting the Democratic nomi- 
nation, nevertheless declared against annexa- 
tion "at present," but stated that, were 
he President, he should act in the matter 
conformably to the opinion of Congress. 
Benton, in the Senate, oposed annexation 
if it meant war with Mexico. 

At the end of May the Democratic 
national convention at Baltimore adopted 
a platform calling for "the reoccupation of 
Oregon and the reannexation of Texas at 
the earliest practicable period" as "great 
American measures." We must now trace 
the steps by which Oregon came to form, 
jointly with Texas, an issue in the campaign. 

The region known in 1844 as Oregon, 
or the "Oregon country," comprised the 
whole area betweeen latitudes 42° and 54° 
40', west of the watershed of the Rocky 
Mountains. In 1790 the Nootka Sound 
convention, between Great Britain and Spain, 



94 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

provided for joint rights of fishing and trade 
to be exercised by the two powers. The 
discovery of the mouth of the Columbia 
River, in 1792, by an American sea-captain, 
laid the foundation of a territorial claim by 
the United States; and the claim was 
further strengthened by the Lewis and 
Clark expedition of 1803-6, which explored 
the upper waters of the Missoviri and fol- 
lowed the Columbia to the sea. By the 
Florida Treaty of 1819 Spain gave up its 
claims to territory on the Pacific coast 
north of 42°, and in 1825 Russia abandoned 
its claims south of 54° 40'. These renun- 
ciations left the United States and Great 
Britain the joint claimants and occupants 
of the Oregon country. 

During the War of 1812 the fur-trading 
post at Astoria, near the mouth of the 
Columbia, lately established by John Jacob 
Astor, was taken by the British, but was 
restored at the end of the war. In 1818 the 
two powers agreed upon the parallel 49° 
as the provisional boundary between Brit- 
ish and American possessions from the Lake 
of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, and 
to a joint occupancy of Oregon for ten years. 
In 1827 the agreement for joint occupancy 
w^as renewed, subject to termination at any 
time on twelve months' notice by either 
party. With the exception of Astoria and 
some posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, 



TEXAS AND OREGON 95 

there were as yet no white settlements in 
the region. 

The advent of Protestant missionaries 
to the Indians, in 1835, was followed, in 
1843, by the arrival of a company of several 
hundred persons from the central West, led 
by Dr. Marcus Whitman. The expedition 
followed an earnest appeal to the American 
Board of Missions by Dr. Whitman, who 
made a hazardous winter journey from 
Oregon to Boston to forestall, if possible, 
the anticipated closing of the mission. The 
spectacular nature of the journey, the omis- 
sion of any reference to Oregon in the Web- 
ster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the interest 
aroused by the proposed expedition, and 
the joining of Oregon and Texas in the Demo- 
cratic platform of 1844, gave rise some years 
later to the' "Marcus Whitman legend," 
which ascribed to Whitman's journey the 
political purpose of prevailing upon Tyler 
not to relinquish Oregon to Great Britain. 

There was never any intention on the part 
of the administration of surrendering Ore- 
gon, the southern portion of which was geo- 
graphically a part of the United States. 
There was, however, great ignorance con- 
cerning the region, and it was doubtless the 
wish of Great Britain to leave the question 
open, so as eventually, perhaps, to make 
the Columbia River the boundary. By 
asserting in their platform that "our title 



96 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

to the whole of the territory of Oregon is 
clear and unquestionable," and that "no 
portion of the same ought to be ceded to 
England or any other power"; and by 
demanding "the reoccupation of Oregon" 
in connection with "the reannexation of 
Texas," the Democrats not only shrewdly 
used Oregon as an offset to Texas, thereby 
appealing to the antislavery North, but 
also skillfully fostered the popular impres- 
sion that both regions had at some time 
belonged to the United States, and were 
now to be recovered. 

To the South the scheme was less pleasing. 
The Oregon of 1844 was not merely the 
present State of that name, but a vast region 
more than twice the size of Texas. If the 
annexation of Texas was to be consummated 
only at the price of acquiring Oregon at 
the same time, there was no apparent gain 
for slavery, nor was the sectional balance in 
the Senate likely to be preserved. 

After having had the treaty of annexation 
before it for nearly seven weeks, the Senate, 
on the 8th of June, rejected it by a vote of 
16 to 35. Two days later Tyler took the 
extraordinary step of sending the treaty 
to the House, with a message in which, 
without criticising the Senate, he urged the 
necessity of prompt action, pointed out that 
a treaty was not the only method by which 
annexation could be accomplished, and 



TEXAS AND OREGON 97 

promised his "active cooperation" in any 
course that might be agreed upon. 

The platforms of the Whig and Liberty 
parties were silent on the question of annexa- 
tion. Clay, who was unanimously nomi- 
nated by the Whigs, attempted in August to 
define his position more clearly, doubtless 
with a view to holding the W^hig support in 
the South. What he said in August did not 
differ materially from what he had said in 
April, but his approval of annexation if it 
could be accomplished honorably and with- 
out war was bitterly attacked by the Aboli- 
tionists, and cost him the votes of Michigan 
and New York. Van Buren's letter against 
annexation, a step of some boldness under 
the circumstances, weakened him as a Demo- 
cratic candidate for the presidency, and on 
the ninth ballot the Baltimore convention 
nominated a "dark horse," James K. Polk 
of Tennessee. Baltimore and Washington 
had just been connected by telegraph, and 
within twenty minutes after the nomination 
a message had been sent to the Democratic 
members of Congress and a reply received. 

Polk had been an acceptable Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, and although 
he was little known to the country at large, 
his nomination, which had been carefully 
planned, was satisfactory to the South and 
aroused no party opposition in the North. 
Clay's popularity, always great, was now at 



98 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

its height. The campaign, with its mass 
meetings, processions, barbecues, and general 
enthusiasm, recalled the "log cabin and 
hard cider" campaign of 1840. Thanks to 
the Abolitionists, the victory went to the 
Democrats. The electoral vote stood 170 
for Polk and 105 for Clay, but in a total 
popular vote, Democratic and Whig, of 
2,636,305, Polk's majority was only 38,180, 
or less than two-thirds of the number cast 
for Birney, the Liberty party candidate. 
It was the Abolitionists who turned the 
scale in New York and Michigan, and gave 
the forty-one electoral votes of those States 

to Polk. 

In his annual message in December Tyler 
rightly interpreted the election as a verdict 
in favor of annexation. "It is the will of 
both the people and the States that Texas 
shall be annexed to the Union promptly 
and immediately." Mindful of the fate of 
the treaty the previous June, he now recom- 
mended the passage of a joint resolution. 
Numerous propositions to give effect to the 
recommendation were at once introduced in 
Congress, and on the 1st of March, 1845, 
a joint resolution for annexation received 
Tyler's approval. 

The resolution provided that all questions 
concerning the boundary of Texas should 
be left to the determination of the United 
States; that the constitution of the State 



TEXAS AND OREGON 99 

should be submitted to Congress for ap- 
proval; and that public buildings and 
military and naval property should be turned 
over to the United States. Texas was to 
retain its public funds and unappropriated 
lands, the proceeds of the latter to be used 
for the discharge of the State debt. New 
States, not exceeding four, in addition to 
Texas, might, with the consent of Texas, 
be formed out of the annexed territory. In 
such States as should be formed north of 
36° 30' slavery was to be prohibited; in 
those formed south of that line slavery should 
be allowed or not as the people of the State 
might decide at the time of its admission. 
The area of the territory acquired was 
371,063 square miles. 

The terms prescribed by the joint reso- 
lution were accepted by the Congress of 
Texas June 18, and by a convention at 
Austin July 4. A State constitution was at 
once drawn up, ratified by popular vote in 
October, and on December 29 a joint resolu- 
tion of Congress admitted Texas as a State. 
The anticipated division of the State, how- 
ever, never took place, and instead of the 
five commonwealths, each with two Senators 
and at least one Representative, upon 
which the South had counted, there were 
gained for slavery only two Senators and 
two Representatives. 

In the same message of December, 1844, 



100 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Tyler informed Congress that negotiations 
had been begun for adjusting the claims 
of Great Britain and the United States to 
Oregon, and urged military and legal pro- 
tection of the American settlers already 
there. In IS^G, and again in 1844, Great 
Britain had offered to accept as a com- 
promise boundary the parallel 49° and the 
Columbia River, together with the free 
navigation of the river. That offer was now 
renewed, with the addition of a small 
amount of territorv north of the river and 
of some free ports on the Pacific; but the 
offer was promptly rejected by the L^nited 
States. In February, 1845, the House passed 
a bill to organize a territorial government 
in Oregon, with 54° 40', the line of the for- 
mer Russian claim, as the northern boundary. 
'VMiere Great Britain had been content to 
ask for two-thirds of the "Oregon country," 
the United States now claimed the whole. 
Such a claim was not likely to smooth the 
course of diplomatic negotiations, however 
much it might appeal to those in the North 
who wanted an oft'set to Texas. The bill 
also prohibited slavery in Oregon, however, 
and on that account the Senate refused to 
consider it. 

Two days after the resolution for the an- 
nexation of Texas received the signature of 
the President, Florida became a State. ^Yith 
the admission of Texas before the end of the 



TEXAS AND OREGON 101 

year, the sectional balance was temporarily 
disturbed, fifteen of the twenty-eight States 
then in the Union being slave commonwealths. 
The Territory of Iowa, however, was about 
ready for admission, and Oregon would 
restore the balance. Save in the Senate, 
the South was hopelessly outnumbered and 
outvoted. Against a free State population, 
in 1840, of 9,700,000 was to be set a slave 
State population (counting three-fifths of 
the slaves in addition to the whites) of only 
7,300,000. In terms of membership and 
votes in the House of Representatives, 
these figures meant that 98 slave State 
members in 1844 were opposed by 135 free 
State members. 

There is need to remember, however, 
that both in Congress and in the country 
sectionalism was as yet rather more obvious 
in statistics than it was in party politics. 
The Democratic and Whig parties were 
still national parties, drawing their support 
from all sections, though in different measure, 
and not yet sharply divided by a single 
overshadowing issue. There were slavery 
Whigs and antislavery Whigs, slavery Demo- 
crats and antislavery Democrats. Save 
for denunciation of the Abolitionists as 
visionaries and fanatics, it was the aim of 
the Democrats to keep the slavery question, 
as far as possible, out of politics, and 
thereby obviate the necessity of taking a 



102 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

party stand in regard to it. The Whigs, with 
a large antislavery, but not abolition, fol- 
lowing in the North and a strong pro- 
slavery following in the South, could hardly 
speak on the subject at all. 

To the influence of party in safeguarding 
the interests of slavery were to be added 
differences of opinion among antislavery 
advocates as to how slavery should be 
opposed. The demand of Garrison and his 
followers for entire abolition received dimin- 
ishing support after 1840. In its place the 
application of the principle of the Missouri 
Compromise, the suppression of the foreign 
slave trade, and freedom for the Territories 
and new acquisitions seemed to promise 
more substantial results. With the knowl- 
edge that Texas would not consent to be 
subdivided, came declining resentment over 
its annexation. On no bill or motion adverse 
to slavery could the entire vote of the free 
States in both houses of Congress be at any 
time massed. Until it could be, or until 
changing issues should bring a new grouping 
of parties, the slaveholding South, with a 
preeminent cause, a definite policy, and 
social as well as political solidarity, might 
be counted upon to hold its own, and in 
holding its own to dominate the nation. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

The cabinet of President Polk comprised 
a number of distinguished names. The 
Secretary of State, James Buchanan, had 
been long in pubKc Hfe, and managed with 
dignity and success the diplomatic business 
of his department; although his lack of 
sympathy with the Mexican policy of the 
administration, together with his own presi- 
dential aspirations, weakened his influence 
as time went on. Robert J. Walker of Mis- 
sissippi, the Secretary of the Treasury, was 
an able financier, with sound and definite 
views on the tariff and on the treatment of 
the government funds. The Secretary of 
War, William L. Marcy, long a member of 
the "Albany regency" and twice governor 
of New York, possessed real administrative 
ability and unflagging industry, notwith- 
standing his identification with the spoils 
system. The Secretary of the Navy until 
September, 1846, was George Bancroft, 
already famous at home and abroad as an 
historian. Nathan Clifford of Maine, who 

103 



104 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

entered the cabinet as attorney-general 
in October, 1846, was an able lawyer and 
later an associate justice of the Supreme 
Court. 

Polk himself was a masterful politician. 
His previous career had not been notable, 
but as President he dominated his cabinet 
and his party. His recently published 
diary reveals a reasonably clear and con- 
sistent policy, especially in regard to Mexico, 
from the beginning. During the first two 
years of his term Congress was Democratic 
in both branches, but for the last two years 
the Whigs controlled the House. 

In the discussions over the annexation 
of Texas, Clay and Van Buren in their cam- 
paign letters, and Benton in a great speech 
in the Senate, had taken ground against 
annexation if it meant war with Mexico. 
That war must shortly follow was now the 
general and natural expectation. In his 
inaugural address Polk expressed confidence 
that the terms offered by the United States 
would be accepted by Texas, but made no 
direct reference to Mexico. On the 6th of 
March, 1845, however, the Mexican min- 
ister entered a formal protest against the 
joint resolution of annexation, and de- 
manded his passports. Before the end of 
the month the American minister to Mexico 
was informed that diplomatic relations be- 
tween the two countries had terminated, and 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 105 

after a delay of several months lie returned 
to the United States. Not until June, how- 
ever, did the Mexican congress make active 
preparations for war. 

The formal annexation of Texas was 
expected to take place on the 4th of July. 
In anticipation of that event, and to defend 
Texas against Mexico, General Zachary 
Taylor, commanding the American forces 
in the Southwest, was ordered in June to 
enter Texas, with the consent of that govern- 
ment, and to advance to some suitable 
point "on or near the Rio Grande"; but 
he was not to take the offensive unless 
Mexico declared war. Taylor entered Texas 
in July, and in August established his 
headquarters near Corpus Christi, on the 
west bank of the Nueces River and about 
one hundred and fifty miles east of the 
Rio Grande. Here he remained unmolested 
until January, 1846. 

With Taylor's army encamped on the 
Nueces, Polk made an attempt to renew 
diplomatic relations with Mexico. In Sep- 
tember John Slidell of Louisiana was ap- 
pointed special envoy. His instructions 
directed him to press for the settlement of 
the long-standing American claims; but 
since it was believed that Mexico was un- 
able to pay even if disposed to do so, he 
was to obtain if possible a cession of terri- 
tory, to include New Mexico and part of 



106 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

California, together with the recognition of 
the Rio Grande as the boundary between 
Mexico and Texas. For the territory so 
acquired Polk was wilhng to pay a sub- 
stantial sum, in addition to assuming the 
pending claims. A fear, how well grounded 
is not fully known, that Great Britain was 
likely to seize California, joined to a desire 
to uphold the Monroe doctrine, were the 
reasons which appear to have weighed 
most heavily with Polk at this time. 

Slidell reached Vera Cruz at the end of 
November. In January, after aggravating 
delay, the Mexican government refused to 
receive him, and he presently returned to 
the United States. The ostensible reasons 
for refusal were that a resumption of friendly 
relations could not properly be considered 
so long as American troops were encamped 
on the Mexican border; that Mexico had 
never concurred in the annexation of Texas; 
and that the territorial proposals of the 
United States went far beyond the question 
of the Texan boundary. It seems clear that 
the weakness of the Mexican government, 
and popular excitement over the suggested 
loss of territory, were reasons at least equally 
important. 

The probability, if not the certainty, that 
Slidell would be rejected was known in Wash- 
ington early in January, 1846. On the 13th 
Taylor was ordered to advance to the Rio 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 107 

Grande. Polk was doubtless sincere in 
believing that the Rio Grande was legally 
the western boundary of Texas, although 
from the Mexican point of view "Taylor in- 
vaded Mexico the moment he entered 
Texas." ^ On the 12th of April Taylor was 
warned by the Mexican commander at 
Matamoras to retire within twenty-four 
hours beyond the Nueces — an order which 
certainly implied some uncertainty on the 
part of Mexico regarding the ownership of 
the region between the two rivers. 

On the 24th of April General Arista 
informed Taylor that "he considered hos- 
tilities commenced and should prosecute 
them." On the same day a party of Ameri- 
can dragoons, numbering sixty-three officers 
and men, sent to discover whether the 
Mexicans had crossed or were preparing 
to cross the Rio Grande, was ambushed on 
the east bank of the river, some sixteen 
were killed or wounded, and the remainder 
captured. The official report of the affair 
reached Washington on Saturday, May 11. 
Polk had already decided to recommend to 
Congress a declaration of war, and in this 
decision the cabinet, with the exception of 
Bancroft, sustained him. The collision on 
the Rio Grande was the incident needed to 
make the recommendation conclusive. Presi- 
dent and cabinet devoted Sunday to the 

* Garrison, JVestward Extension, 264. 



108 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

preparation of the message, and on Monday 
it was sent in. 

To the Whigs the exalted integrity of 
purpose which the message claimed for 
the United States was peculiarly irritating. 
"We have tried every effort at conciliation. 
. . . But now, after reiterated menaces, 
Mexico has passed the boundary of the 
United States, has invaded our territory, 
and shed American blood upon the Ameri- 
can soil ... As war exists, and, notwith- 
standing all our efforts to avoid it, exists 
by the act of Mexico herself, we are called 
upon by every consideration of duty and 
patriotism to vindicate with decision the 
honor, the rights, and the interests of our 
country." Such assumption of national 
virtue is best explained, perhaps, by Polk's 
sincere belief in the righteousness of his 
course — a belief which the Whigs, at least, 
declined to share. 

On the 13th of May an act was passed 
recognizing the existence of a state of war, 
authorizing the employment of 50,000 vol- 
unteers, and appropriating $10,000,000 for 
war purposes. The vote on the bill in the 
House, 174 to 14, was a fair indication of 
public opinion; for the war, in spite of 
Whig opposition, was undoubtedly pop- 
ular, save in New England. In the Senate 
the vote stood 40 to 2. Taylor had already 
been authorized to accept the services of 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 109 

volunteers from Texas and the Southwestern 
States, and had called on the governor of 
Texas for two reghnents of infantry and 
two of cavalry, and on the governor of 
Louisiana, Taylor's own State, for four 
regiments of infantry. 

Recent excitement over Oregon had al- 
ready stimulated the war fever. In his 
inaugural address Polk had taken a firm 
stand in favor of the "clear and unques- 
tionable" claims of the United States. In 
July, 1845, Buchanan renewed the offer to 
compromise on the Kne of 49°, but without 
the surrender to Great Britain of the free 
navigation of the Columbia; but the offer 
was rejected by Pakenham, the British 
minister, and was presently withdrawn. The 
popular cries of "the whole of Oregon or 
none" and "fifty-four forty or fight" un- 
doubtedly strengthened Polk's decision to 
demand the entire region up to 54° 40', 
even at the cost of war with Great Britain; 
nor was he deterred by the approaching 
climax of the Mexican controversy. In 
December he recommended that notice be 
given to terminate the joint occupation of 
Oregon, as provided by the convention of 
1827, and urged military protection for 
the Oregon trail. Congress and the country 
were in accord with the President, but it 
was not until May 21, 184G, that the notice 
was given. 



110 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Fortunately for the peaceful relations of 
the two English-speaking nations, the end 
of the Oregon controversy was near. On 
the 6th of June Pakenham presented the 
draft of a treaty embodying the previous 
suggestions of the line of 49° and the free 
navigation of the Columbia River. Polk 
laid the treaty before the Senate without 
recommendation, in order that the respon- 
sibility for surrendering territory hitherto 
claimed might be borne by that body rather 
than by him. The Senate, by a vote of 
37 to 12, advised acceptance, and on June 
15 the treaty was signed. The area of the 
acquisition was 288,689 square miles. 

Financial readjustment also helped to 
clear the way for a successful prosecution 
of the war with Mexico. The protective 
duties imposed by the tariff of 1842 were 
not in harmony with Democratic principles, 
and were sustained only by the need of 
revenue after the panic of 1837. By 1844, 
however, prosperity had returned, and pro- 
tection could again be made an issue. The 
platform declarations of 1844, indeed, were 
far from explicit. The Democrats declared 
that the government ought not to "foster 
one branch of industry to the detriment of 
another," and that "no more revenue ought 
to be raised than is required to defray the 
necessary expenses of the government." 
The Whigs framed a delphic demand for 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 111 

"a tariff for revenue to defray the necessary 
expenses of the government, and discrim- 
inating with special reference to the protec- 
tion of the domestic labor of the country." 
Polk, who during the campaign declared in 
favor of "moderate discriminating duties" 
for revenue with "reasonable incidental 
protection," repeated the vague declaration 
in his inaugural. 

In his annual message in December, 
1845, however, Polk argued at length in 
favor of a tariff for revenue only, and urged 
the substitution of ad valorem for specific 
duties. The Walker Tariff of 1846, reducing 
duties to a revenue basis, was passed by 
Congress substantially as recommended by 
the Secretary of the Treasury, save for the 
rejection of proposed duties on tea and 
coffee. Among the noteworthy features of 
the act were the grouping of dutiable arti- 
cles in classes, or schedules, indicated by 
letters, and the establishment of bonded 
warehouses for the storage or rehandling 
of imported goods. The Southern and 
Western States, as was to be expected, fur- 
nished the majority in favor of the bill. 

In August, 1846, the subtreasury system 
was reestablished. Since the repeal, in 
1841, of the subtreasury act of the previous 
year, the government funds had been de- 
posited in State banks. Polk condemned 
the use of banks for this purpose in his 



112 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

first annual message, and the act of 1846, 
passed by a narrow majority in the Senate 
but by a large majority in the House, was 
practically identical with the act of 1840. 
The mints at Philadelphia and New Orleans, 
and suitable places at Boston, New York, 
Charleston, and St. Louis, were designated 
as places at which all federal officers receiving 
public money should make deposits. The 
divorce from banks was complete, and the 
subtreasury, or independent treasury, sys- 
tem is still in force. Advantage was taken 
of the passage of the act to include a provi- 
sion requiring all payments to the United 
States to be made in gold or silver coin or 
in treasury notes. 

The general plan of military operations, 
framed apparently by Polk, comprised the 
occupation of New Mexico and California, 
those designations then including the present 
Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and the western 
part of Colorado; and of the Mexican State 
of Chihuahua. An attack upon the City 
of Mexico was to be made, not for the pur- 
pose of acquiring territory in central Mexico, 
but to prevent the recovery of the northern 
provinces and compel their cession to the 
United States. 

Immediately upon the declaration of 
war General Winfield S. Scott, the command- 
ing general of the army, was assigned to the 
command of the forces against Mexico. 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 113 

Scott had a creditable military record, but 
he was a Whig in politics and out of sym- 
pathy with Polk, who on his part distrusted 
him. He was presently called to account 
for delay in proceeding to Mexico, and 
wrote a letter to the Secretary of War in 
which he made offensive allusions to the 
President. He was accordingly relieved 
from command of the expedition and kept 
at Washington, and the command of the 
army in Mexico intrusted to General Taylor, 
who was also a Whig. 

The chief difficulty in conquering New 
Mexico and California lay in the long and 
arduous transportation of troops and sup- 
plies across what was then the "great 
American desert," stretching more than five 
hundred miles from the Missouri River to 
the Rocky Mountains. In July, 1846, 
General Stephen W. Kearny assembled at 
Bent's Fort, where the Santa Fe trail 
crossed the Arkansas River, a force of 1800 
men, most of them undisciplined volun- 
teers. On the 18th of August he occupied 
Santa Fe. Here he set up a temporary 
government, and in September, with a small 
body of dragoons, set out for California, 
arriving at San Diego in December. 

California had already been conquered 
by an American fleet, the commander of 
which. Commodore John D. Sloat, had in 
June, 1845, before Texas had formally 



114 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

accepted annexation, been directed to occupy 
San Francisco as soon as he learned that 
Mexico had declared war. Sloat was dila- 
tory, but on July 7, seven weeks after he 
was informed of the first fighting on the Rio 
Grande, he seized Monterey, and on the 
9th Captain Montgomery took San Fran- 
cisco. On the 13th of August Commodore 
R. F. Stockton, who had succeeded Sloat, 
took Los Angeles. The remaining Mexican 
posts in California fell easily into American 
hands. A revolt in Los Angeles drove the 
Americans out of the city, but it was re- 
taken after a succession of small engage- 
ments, and by the beginning of 1847 Mexican 
resistance was at an end. 

In the North, meantime, a movement of 
a different sort had established the Bear 
Flag Republic. Captain John C. Fremont, 
an officer of engineers and a son-in-law of 
Senator Benton, had already, in two recent 
expeditions, explored the country between 
the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, 
and entered Oregon and California. In 
March, 1846, while encamped near Monterey 
on a third expedition, he had refused to 
obey an order from the Mexican authorities 
to leave the country, and had raised the 
American flag; subsequently, however, he 
had withdrawn to the Oregon border, 
whence in June he returned to the Sacra- 
mento valley. 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 115 

Following a report that a Spanish force 
was on the way to attack them, a body of 
American immigrants north of San Fran- 
cisco Bay seized the fort at Sonoma, and 
on June 14 proclaimed their independence 
by raising an improvised Bear Flag. Al- 
though Fremont was not directly respon- 
sible for the movement, he was quick to 
take advantage of it, and on June 25 occu- 
pied Sonoma, and shortly afterwards, on 
hearing of the capture of Monterey, raised 
the American flag. He then joined Stock- 
ton, assisted in the conquest of southern 
California, and in August was appointed 
territorial governor. A conflict of authority 
between Stockton and Kearny ensued, 
in which Fremont sided with Stockton. 
For his conduct he was court-martialed 
and sentenced to dismissal from the army. 
The sentence was remitted by Polk, but 
Fremont resigned. 

The invasion of northern Mexico was 
accomplished by a detachment of 850 men 
from Kearny's force at Santa Fe, under 
command of Colonel A. W. Doniphan. 
The expedition started in December, entered 
Mexico by way of El Paso, and on March 
1, 1847, occupied Chihuahua. Another 
expedition from San Antonio, Texas, under 
General J. E. Wool, had entered Mexico in 
October, but failed to reach Chihuahua and 
had turned south to Monclova. Kearny 



116 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

remained at Cliihuahua until the end of 
April, and then joined Taylor at Saltillo. 

Taylor, meantime, had advanced into 
Mexico. On May 8 he defeated the Mexicans 
at Palo Alto, and again on the next day at 
Resaca de la Palma, driving them across the 
Rio Grande. In September he fought a 
successful three days' battle at Monterey, 
occupied Saltillo November 16, and Vic- 
toria December 29. On February 23, 1847, 
he was attacked at Buena Vista, near Sal- 
tillo, by a Mexican army of more than 
twenty thousand men under Santa Anna. 
Although outnumbered three to one, the 
Americans inflicted upon Santa Anna an 
overwhelming defeat, and forced him to 
give his attention thereafter to the defense 
of the City of Mexico. 

The position of Santa Anna was an inter- 
esting illustration of the politics that under- 
lay the war. In consequence of a revolu- 
tion in December, 1844, Santa Anna had 
been expelled from Mexico and had taken 
refuge at Havana. He had a strong following 
in Mexico, and since his rival and successor, 
Paredes, was pledged to the reconquest of 
Texas and to war with the United States, 
Polk had decided not to obstruct Santa 
Anna's return. Orders to this effect were 
accordingly issued, in May, 1846, to the 
commander of the American blockading 
fleet in the Gulf. In August another revolu- 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 117 

tion resulted in the overthrow and expul- 
sion of Paredes, and shortly afterwards 
Santa Anna returned. The discovery, 
through intercepted dispatches, of the plan 
to concentrate the advance upon Mexico 
proper led him to attack Taylor at Buena 
Vista, but the overwhelming defeat of the 
Mexicans destroyed the last hope of recover- 
ing New Mexico and California. 

Polk had long been dissatisfied with 
Taylor, from whom he complained that he 
received neither advice nor information. 
The command of the army in Mexico was 
accordingly given to Scott. Scott reached 
Matamoras in December, 1846. On the 
9th of March he effected a landing near 
Vera Cruz, the "Gibraltar of Mexico," 
and on the 29th, with the aid of a naval 
force under Commodore David Conner, 
took the city. Two of the world's great 
commanders, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert 
E. Lee, distinguished themselves on this 
occasion, the former as lieutenant and the 
latter as captain. 

The advance upon the City of Mexico 
began April 8. In all respects save numbers 
and situation the Americans had the supe- 
riority, but the difficult mountainous coun- 
try, admirably suited for defense, together 
with the stubborn resistance of the Mexicans, 
made the task of conquest arduous in the 
extreme. At Cerro Gordo, on April 17 and 



118 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

18, a superior Mexican force was driven 
from a natural fortress only by hard fight- 
ing. In August the Americans were in sight 
of the Mexican capital, strongly fortified, 
and accessible only by a road built across 
a marsh and commanded by cannon. 

Scott, unable to attack in front, began 
the construction of a circuitous road over 
the lava beds. On August 19 and 20 he 
beat back the enemy at Contreras and the 
convent of Churubusco. An armistice, 
proposed by Scott, was accepted by Santa 
Anna August 24, and N. P. Trist, formerly 
chief clerk of the State Department, who 
had accompanied the army as special en- 
voy, opened negotiations for peace. The 
negotiations came to nothing save to give 
Santa Anna tim^e to strengthen his position, 
and the armistice was terminated. On 
September 8 Scott captured the cannon 
foundry at Moiino del Rey, and five days 
later stormed the fortress of Chapultepec, 
commanding the city. On the 14th the 
Americans entered the city and hoisted the 
American flag on the capitol building. 

The circumstances attending the con- 
clusion of peace fairly matched those under 
which the war had been begun and carried 
on. Trist had been given full powers to 
conclude a definitive treaty of peace, on the 
basis of the Rio Grande, from its mouth to 
the southern boundary of New Mexico, 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 119 

as the boundary between the two countries, 
the cession of New Mexico and California, 
and, if possible, the right of way across the 
isthmus of Tehuantepec. The proposals 
of Mexico during the armistice were entirely 
of an opposite tenor, but Trist, notwith- 
standing the positive nature of his instruc- 
tions, hesitated, and finally referred the 
proposals to Washington. 

For his vacillating course Trist was 
promptly recalled. The letter of recall did 
not reach him, however, until November 
16, by which time the City of Mexico had 
fallen, Santa Anna had abdicated, and a 
new government had been installed. When, 
therefore, on November 22, the new govern- 
ment appointed commissioners to negotiate 
on the basis of Trist's original instructions, 
he took advantage of the fact that the 
Mexican authorities had not yet received 
official notification of his recall, and assumed 
to act as though he were still duly accredited. 

On February 2, 1848, Trist concluded with 
Mexico the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 
The boundary between the two countries 
was fixed in the Rio Grande, from its mouth 
to the southern boundary of New Mexico, 
thence along the southern and western 
boundary of New Mexico to the Gila River, 
down the Gila to the Colorado River, down 
the Colorado to the boundary between 
Upper and Lower California, and thence 



120 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

west to the Pacific. In consideration of 
the territory thus ceded, the United States 
agreed to pay Mexico $15,000,000, and to 
assume the long-standing American claims 
to an amount not exceeding $3,250,000. 
Polk had been willing to pay much more 
than the treaty called for, at the same time 
that he had steadily resisted pressure to 
demand more territory than was actually 
acquired. 

The brilliant success with which Polk 
was "conquering a peace" had not blinded 
the eyes of antislavery members of Congress 
to the issue involved in the acquisition of 
territory from Mexico. On the 8th of 
August, 1846, Polk, after consultation with 
his cabinet and several members of Congress, 
had sent in a special message asking for an 
appropriation of money to aid in settling 
the difficulties with Mexico. What he 
desired was a sum sufficient to make a first 
payment for territory which he wished to 
acquire, and which it was believed that the 
Paredes government, in need of money, 
would be willing to sell. 

A bill appropriating two million dollars 
was at once introduced in the House. There- 
upon a Democratic member from Pennsyl- 
vania, David Wilmot, offered an amendment 
which read: ^'Provided, That, as an express 
and fundamental condition to the acqui- 
sition of any territory from the Republic 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 121 

of Mexico by the United States, by virtue 
of any treaty which may be negotiated 
between them, and to the use by the Execu- 
tive of the moneys herein appropriated, 
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
shall ever exist in any part of said territory, 
except for crime, whereof the party shall 
first be duly convicted." The amendment, 
drafted by Jacob Brinkerhoff, a represen- 
tative from Ohio, but known as the "Wil- 
mot Proviso," voiced the opposition of 
Northern Whigs and Democrats to slavery 
in the new acquisitions. 

The bill with the amendment passed the 
House, but failed in the Senate. Polk 
repeated his request in December, and a 
two-million bill, with a revised form of the 
Wilmot Proviso, passed the House. The 
Senate substituted three millions for two 
and struck out the proviso; and in this form 
the House finally accepted it. "The debate 
in the two houses was able but ominous. 
It showed clearly in all their mischievous 
effectiveness the influences that were making 
for sectionalization and threatening to dis- 
solve the Union. The subterranean cur- 
rents of political activity became manifest, 
and gave evidence of the intense factional 
and sectional animosity engendered by the 
shelving of Van Buren, the annexation of 
Texas, the Oregon compromise, the Walker 
tariff, and the reestablishment of the 



122 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

independent treasury — to which was now 
added the fierce hostility between North 
and South aroused by the agitation of the 
slavery question." ^ 

Polk was little disposed to reject so ad- 
vantageous a treaty as Trist had negotiated, 
and on February 22, 1848, laid it before the 
Senate with the recommendation that it 
be ratified, save for the tenth article relating 
to public lands in Texas. The Senate, 
March 10, ratified the treaty with the changes 
suggested, and in this form it was accepted 
by Mexico and the final ratifications ex- 
changed in May. 

Polk had declared before his election that 
he would not be a candidate for a second 
term; and although the Democrats could 
not but approve his administration, the pro- 
nounced antislavery opposition left him no 
choice save to reiterate his original decla- 
ration. With a split in New York, where 
the factions known as "Hunkers" and 
"Barnburners" held rival conventions and 
chose rival delegations, the Democratic 
convention at Baltimore nominated Lewis 
Cass of Michigan. The platform praised 
the war, but a plank affirming the doctrine 
of non-interference with property rights 
(in slaves, that is) in the States and Terri- 
tories was rejected. The Whigs nominated 
General Taylor, who, after the appointment 

* Garrison, Westward Extension, 263. 



THE WAR WITH MEXICO 123 

of Scott to the command of the forces des- 
tined for the City of Mexico campaign, had 
resigned from the army and returned to 
the United States. No platform was deemed 
necessary. A "Barnburner" convention 
nominated Van Buren on a platform which 
declared for "free soil, free speech, free 
labor, and free men." 

The split in New York, joined to the 
separate free soil candidacy of Van Buren, 
cost the Democrats the election. Taylor- 
received 163 electoral votes, Cass 127. 
Polk could say with truth, in concluding his 
last annual message to Congress, that his 
admmistration had "fallen upon eventful 
times." Within the next two years the 
momentous consequences of his work were 
to be made fully apparent. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

The renewed struggle between the North 
and the South over the territorial status of 
slavery, foreshadowed by the prospect of a 
successful war with Mexico, centered at 
first about Oregon. The rapidly growing 
population of the region required the organi- 
zation of a territorial government as soon 
as possible after the adjustment of the boun- 
dary controversy with Great Britain; and 
it was certain that the status of slavery in 
the Territory would determine its status 
in the State. If the principle of the Missouri 
Compromise, with the consequent admission 
of States in pairs, were to be observed, Ore- 
gon would be free, and the South would be 
entitled to a slave State, presumably formed 
from Texas or from territory acquired from 
Mexico, as an equitable offset. On the 
other hand, if that principle were to be dis- 
regarded, another obviously fairer to both 
parties must be found, and the perpetual 
prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30' 
repealed. The growth and application of 
the new doctrine have now to be traced. 

124 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 125 

Immediately upon the conclusion of the 
boundary treaty Polk urged upon Congress 
the formation of a territorial government 
for Oregon. A bill for that purpose, extend- 
ing to the people of the Territory the privi- 
leges and restrictions of the Ordinance 
of 1787, passed the House January 16, 1847. 
The Ordinance, which forever prohibited 
slavery in the territory of the United States 
northwest of the Ohio River, was part of 

the fundamental law of the four States 

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan — 
formed from the old Northwest Territory, 
as well as of the Territory of Wisconsin; 
and the antislavery provision had also been 
applied to the Territories of Minnesota and 
Iowa. 

So far as Oregon was concerned, it made 
no difference whether slavery were excluded 
by the Ordinance of 1787 or by the Wilmot 
Proviso. The explicit application of the 
ordinance, however, appealed to many who 
were willing to restrict slavery in the North 
but unwilling to exclude it from the whole 
of New Mexico and California. The Senate 
twice referred the bill to a committee, but 
tmally laid it on the table. 

On January 10, 1848, a bill to organize the 
lerritory of Oregon was reported in the 
benate by Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic 
benator from Illinois. In May Polk again 
called attention to the need of a territorial 



126 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

government. To an amendment extending 
to the new Territory the prohibition of the 
Ordinance of 1787 was now opposed an 
amendment, framed by Polk himself, ex- 
tending the Missouri Compromise line to 
the Pacific. Meantime peace had been made 
with Mexico, an area more than twice the 
size of Oregon had been added to the United 
States, and the Free Soil campaign was 
under way. The question of slavery in 
Oregon was now merged in that of slavery 
in New Mexico and California. 

The Senate referred the matter to a 
select committee, of which Clayton of 
Delaware was chairman, which reported 
on July 18 a bill to organize the three Terri- 
tories of Oregon, California, and New 
Mexico. Antislavery laws already passed 
by a provisional government in Oregon 
were to be validated, subject to the later 
action of the territorial legislature; but 
the right of the legislatures of New Mexico 
and California to legislate regarding slavery 
was withheld. Controversies over the status 
of slavery in either Territory might be 
appealed to the Supreme Court of the 
United States. The latter provision enacted, 
in the expressive language of Senator "Tom" 
Corwin of Ohio, "not a law, but a lawsuit." 

On the morning of July 27, after an all- 
night session, the Clayton compromise 
passed the Senate. The House, by a vote 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 127 

of 112 to 97, laid it on the table, and on the 
2d of August passed a bill for the organi- 
zation of Oregon alone, with the antislavery 
provision of the Ordinance of 1787. An 
aniendment in the Senate, extending the 
Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, 
was rejected by the House; the Senate, 
mindful of the recent nomination of Van 
Buren on a platform calling for "free soil, 
free speech, free labor, and free men," 
receded, and accepted the bill as framed by 
the House. Polk signed the bill, explaining 
with unction that he did so because he found 
nothing in it "inconsistent with the laws of 
the Missouri Compromise, if extended from 
the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean." 

Before Congress met in December, 1848, 
the country was going wild over the dis- 
covery of gold in California. Only a few 
days before the signature of the Treaty of 
Guadalupe Hidalgo, a workman named 
Marshall, employed in building a mill some 
fifty miles from Sutter's Fort, in the Sacra- 
mento valley, found in the gravel yellow 
particles which proved to be gold. Before 
long the secret was known, and a mad rush 
for the gold fields began. Immigrants 
poured in from Oregon and all parts of Cali- 
fornia; ordinary business was abandoned; 
newspapers suspended publication for lack 
of editors and compositors; soldiers and 
sailors deserted. Commodore Jones wrote 



128 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

in October to the Secretary of the Navy: 
**The commerce of this coast is wholly cut 
off. No sooner does a ship arrive at a port 
of California than captain, mate, cook, and 
hands all desert her." Fabulous reports 
were spread of the wealth to be had even in 
a single day. 

From the East, where the news was 
received in November, came an outpouring 
of "Argonauts" and "Forty-niners" unpar- 
alleled in modern times. "By the end of 
March 270 ships with 18,341 emigrants had 
left New York alone. In February, 1848, 
there were but 2000 Americans in all Cali- 
fornia; in December there were 6000."^ 
Some went by way of the Isthmus of Panama; 
others made the long voyage around Cape 
Horn; thousands more essayed the difficult 
and dangerous journey across the plains. 
Even Europe, already torn by the revolu- 
tions of 1848, felt the spell of gold, and 
the volume of immigration rose from 226,527 
in 1848 to 369,986 in 1850. 

Pending the extension of the laws of the 
United States over California, there was 
for a brief time demoralization and disorder. 
The rush of gold-seekers to the "diggings" 
and to San Francisco swept along with it 
thieves, gamblers, criminals, and despera- 
does of every sort. Moral restraints were 
removed, vice and crime multiplied, and the 

1 J. B. McMaster in Cambridge Modern History, VII, 401.. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 129 

fever of speculation, joined to the mad 
scramble for wealth, brought social delirium. 
Only for a few months, however, did law^- 
lessness reign; then the better element 
asserted itself, desperadoes were hung, shot, 
or driven out of the country, and order once 
more prevailed. The effective work of the 
"Vigilants" has not to this day ceased to 
be a vivid memory. 

It was observed that, of the thousands 
who flocked to California in search of wealth, 
few came from the slave States. For the 
Southern planter the toilsome journey and 
rough life had few attractions. In spite of 
the loud asseverations, made in increasing 
volume on the floors of the House and 
Senate, about the inherent goodness of 
slavery, the institution showed itself pecu- 
liarly sensitive to environment and averse 
to transplantation. Property in slaves was 
too precarious to risk a struggle with free 
labor; and in a community which, like Cali- 
fornia, was peopled almost exclusively with 
men who worked with their hands and 
owned no master save themselves, negro 
slavery found no place. 

The people themselves were not long in 
declaring their attitude towards slavery. 
In March, 1849, following the recommenda- 
tion of Polk, Congress extended to California 
the revenue laws of the United States and 
established a collection district there. In 



130 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

September the provisional governor, Gen- 
eral Riley, called a constitutional conven- 
tion at Monterey, which in October adopted 
a constitution prohibiting slavery. In No- 
vember, by a vote of 12,061 to 811, the con- 
stitution was ratified, and the necessary 
steps were at once taken to secure the 
admission of the State. Not only was there 
definitive and irrevocable opposition to 
slavery among the Californians, but the 
preliminary discipline of a territorial organi- 
zation was also rejected. Some even went 
so far as to intimate that California must 
be held as a State if it was to be held at all. 
Congress had already attempted to fore- 
stall the free State movement, but the 
Northern Democrats, believing that the 
action of the Southern Democrats had 
sacrificed the party in the presidential elec- 
tion, were now ready to join with the anti- 
slavery Whigs in opposing slavery in the 
Territories. In the short session of 1848- 
49 the combined free soil vote passed bills 
in the House to organize the Territories of 
New Mexico and California, with the Wil- 
mot Proviso. When the Senate refused 
consideration, the House by resolution con- 
demned the slave trade in the District of 
Columbia. Shortly before the close of the 
session, the Senate added a New Mexico 
and California bill, with slavery, as a "rider" 
to one of the general appropriation bills. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 131 

The House substituted an amendment con- 
tinuing in force in the region, until July 
4, 1850, the Mexican laws, which prohibited 
slavery. The Senate rejected the substi- 
tute, but dropped its own "rider" also. 

In the Democratic convention of 1848 
William L. Yancey of Alabama had offered, 
as an additional plank in the platform, a 
resolution declaring "that the doctrine of 
non-interference with the rights of property 
of any portion of the people of this confed- 
eracy, be it in the States or Territories 
thereof, by any other than the parties inter- 
ested in them, is the true republican doctrine 
recognized by this body." By the over- 
whelming vote of 36 to 218 the resolution was 
rejected, but it was observed that all the 
affirmative votes came from the slave States. 
The resolution embodied, in cumbrous phra- 
seology, the new doctrine of "popular sover- 
eignty," by means of which it was hoped 
that slavery might be extended to some of 
the new Territories. 

The enunciation of the doctrine of popu- 
lar sovereignty ushered in a new phase of 
the long-standing slavery controversy. The 
Missouri Compromise restricted the forma- 
tion of new slave States to the region south 
of 36° 30', except Missouri. The Wilmot 
Proviso, by attempting to exclude slavery 
from the region acquired from Mexico, 
virtually affirmed that the public domain was 



132 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

normally free; and the Free Soil party, 
drawing its supporters from both Demo- 
crats and Whigs, took its stand on that 
principle. Popular sovereignty, on the 
other hand, rejected the idea that freedom, 
rather than slavery, was the normal status 
of the public domain, denied the right of 
Congress to exclude slavery from a Terri- 
tory, and claimed for the people of each 
State the right to decide for themselves, 
when admitted to the Union, what their 
social institutions should be. The defect 
in the argument, from the Free Soil point 
of view, was that people were not likely to 
have the one institution as a Territory and 
the other as a State; so that the establish- 
ment of slavery in a Territory, the social 
institutions of which were subject to regu- 
lation by Congress, would almost certainly 
result in the continuance of the same insti- 
tutions by the State, over whose policy in 
such matters Congress could apparently 
have no control whatever. 

The first session of the Thirty-first Con- 
gress convened December 3, 1849. The 
Senate had a strong Democratic majority. 
In the House nine Free Soilers held the 
balance of power between 110 Democrats 
and 105 Whigs. The House plunged at 
once into a speakership contest. The prin- 
cipal candidates were Robert C. W^inthrop 
of Massachusetts, a W^hig, who had been 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 133 

Speaker in the preceding Congress, and 
Howell Cobb of Georgia, a Democrat. Nei- 
ther could command the support of the 
Free Soilers. After 62 ballots, when each 
of the two candidates had 97 votes, it was 
agreed to elect by a plurality; and on the 
next ballot Cobb was chosen. On January 
11 the House, embittered by the struggle, 
completed its choice of officers and was 
ready for business. 

On the 21st of January President Taylor 
informed the House, and two days later 
the Senate, of the reported movement for 
statehood in California, and of the likelihood 
that similar action would shortly be taken 
in New Mexico. He urged that, for the 
avoidance of sectional strife, Congress should 
accept the decision of the people of Cali- 
fornia and admit the State with the consti- 
tution proposed. With regard to New 
Mexico, however, he suggested that the 
organization of a territorial government 
might properly be delayed until the claim 
of Texas to a considerable part of the region 
had been adjusted. 

The Senate already had before it a bill 
to organize the Territories of California, 
Deseret or Utah, and New Mexico. On Janu- 
ary 29 Clay submitted a series of resolu- 
tions intended to pave the way for compro- 
mise. He proposed that California, "with 
suitable boundaries," be admitted as a 



134 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

State without any restriction regarding 
slavery; that as slavery "does not exist 
by law, and is not likely to be introduced 
into any of the territory" acquired from 
Mexico, a territorial government, without 
restriction for or against slavery, ought to 
be formed in so much of the region as was 
not included in California; that the boun- 
dary of Texas be fixed so as not to include 
any part of New Mexico, Texas, meantime, 
being given a money equivalent for the 
territory relinquished; that the slave trade, 
but not slavery, be prohibited in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia; and that a more stringent 
fugitive slave law be enacted. 

Deba^te on the resolutions began Febru- 
ary 5 and continued for ten weeks. On the 
13th of February the constitution of Cali- 
fornia was laid before Congress. April 18 
the resolutions were referred to a select 
committee, of which Clay was chairman, 
which reported with the drafts of proposed 
bills on May 8. The committee recom- 
mended the admission of California; the 
organization of territorial governments for 
New Mexico and Utah, without the Wilmot 
Proviso; and the exclusion of Texas from 
any part of New Mexico, with a pecuniary 
equivalent. All of these measures were to 
be incorporated in one bill. The committee 
further reported a bill to prohibit the slave 
trade in the District of Columbia, and ap- 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 135 

proved the enactment of a new fugitive 
slave law. 

Then began a great parliamentary battle 
over the "Omnibus Bill," as the first meas- 
ure reported by the committee was called. 
On June 17 an amendment applying to Utah 
the principle of "popular sovereignty" was 
agreed to. The sudden death of President 
Tajdor on the 9th of July devolved the 
executive ofHce upon the Vice-President, 
Millard Fillmore, who was under the influ- 
ence of Clay, and hence more inclined than 
Taylor to favor the compromise. On the 
last day of July the sections of the bill 
relating to California, New Mexico, and 
Texas were stricken out, and the next day 
what was left of the "Omnibus Bill," nov/ 
reduced to a bill to organize a territorial 
government for Utah, passed the Senate. 

The threatening attitude of Texas, which 
was making preparations to assert by force 
its claim to a part of New Mexico, hastened 
the conclusion of the compromise. Fillmore, 
while declaring that peace and the authority 
of the United States must be maintained, 
pointed out that the executive had no author- 
ity to settle a question of boundary. On 
the 10th of August the Senate passed a bill 
to adjust the Texas boundary, following it 
five days later by a bill organizing the Terri- 
tory of New Mexico. The House insisted 
upon joining the two bills in one, and in this 



136 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

the Senate concurred. The Utah bill be- 
came law September 9, and on the same day 
a bill to admit California was approved by 
the President. The passage of laws for the 
recovery of fugitive slaves, and to prohibit 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia, 
completed the series of measures which, 
collectively, make up the Compromise of 
1850. 

The essence of the compromise, so far 
as slavery was concerned, is to be found 
in the following provision, inserted in each 
of the two territorial acts: "when admitted 
as a State, the said Territory, or any portion 
of the same, shall be received into the Union, 
with or without slavery, as their constitu- 
tion may prescribe at the time of their 
admission." Taken in connection with the 
admission of California as a free State, it is 
clear that the South yielded its demand for 
the positive establishment of slavery in a 
part of the Mexican acquisition, and con- 
sented to its prohibition in California; while 
the North yielded its demand for the uni- 
versal application of the Wilmot Proviso. 
As for the Missouri Compromise, that agree- 
ment remained untouched. For the rest, 
the new fugitive slave law was set over 
against the abolition of slavery in the na- 
tional capital and the payment of $10,000,000 
to Texas in compensation for the loss of a 
part of New Mexico. 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 137 

The admission of California destroyed the 
sectional balance in the Senate, which had 
so long been an anxious care. Iowa had 
been admitted in 1846, Wisconsin in 1848; 
and of the thirty-one States now in the 
Union, sixteen were free. With Oregon des- 
tined for freedom, the balance could be 
restored only by insuring the establishment 
of slavery in both New Mexico and Utah. 
The population of the former was chiefly 
Mexican and Indian, and most of the area of 
the latter was believed to be a desert. 
Under such circumstances, the outlook for 
the* 'peculiar institution" was not promising. 

The great speeches on the compromise 
were made in March, while Clay's reso- 
lutions were under debate in the Senate. 
On the 4th Calhoun, dying of consumption 
and too weak to speak, sat in his seat while 
his speech was read by his colleague. Mason. 
His words were a "message of despair" 
and a prophecy of disunion. In his opinion 
further compromise was impossible, and 
the one proposed by Clay would fail. The 
North, and not the South, was the aggressor; 
and unless the North ceased its attacks upon 
slavery, suppressed the demand for aboli- 
tion, and gave over the harboring of fugi- 
tive slaves, the South would be compelled 
to protect itself even at the cost of war. It 
was his last message to the American people. 
Just as the month was passing, he died. 



138 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Webster, too, prince of orators and con- 
stitutional lawyers, made on the 7th of 
March his last great speech. With some- 
thing of the old m.assive eloquence he 
championed the compromise. Believing that 
slavery was excluded from New Mexico 
by natural laws of soil and climate, he saw 
no reason for excluding it by statute. "I 
would not take pains to reaffirm an ordinance 
of nature, nor to reenact the will of God. 
And I would put in no Wilmot Proviso, 
for the purpose of a taunt or a reproach." 
The South, he thought, had just grievances 
against the North. As for the Abolitionists, 
''their operations for the last twenty years 
have produced nothing good or valuable." 
The threat of secession he heard with "pain, 
anguish, and distress," for peaceable seces- 
sion vv^as impossible. 

The moderate antislavery sentiment of 
the North was eloquently voiced by William 
H. Seward of New York. Seward declared 
himself unalterably opposed to compro- 
mise, believing all such agreements to be 
"radically wrong and essentially vicious." 
He denounced the principle of the fugitive 
slave law as "unjust, unconstitutional, and 
immoral," converting hospitality into a 
crime. The Constitution devotes the public 
domain "to union, to justice, to defense, 
to welfare, and to liberty. But there is a 
higher law than the Constitution, which 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 139 

regulates our authority over the domain, 
and devotes it to the same noble purposes. 
. . . The simple, bold, and even awful 
question which presents itself to us is this: 
Shall we w^ho are founding institutions, 
social and political, for countless millions — 
shall we who know by experience the wise 
and the just, and are free to choose them, 
and to reject the erroneous and unjust — 
shall we establish human bondage, or per- 
mit it by our sufferance to be established? 
Sir, our forefathers would not have hesitated 
an hour." 

The constitutionality of the Compromise 
of 1850 presents a difficult question. In 
appealing to a "higher law" than the Con- 
stitution, imposing upon Congress the obli- 
gation to keep the Territories free, Seward 
not only espoused the cardinal tenet of the 
Abolitionists, but also championed the com- 
mon law principle laid down by Lord Mans- 
field in the Somerset case. On the other 
hand, since the United States as a federal 
government had no common law, and thus 
far had not interfered with slavery in the 
States, there was force in the argument that 
"popular sovereignty" accorded best with 
American practice. No State had aban- 
doned slavery because it had to, none now 
possessed it because of outside compulsion. 
And so long as public opinion was divided, 
no strictly constitutional objection could 



140 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

perhaps be made to a policy which left the 
people of the Territories to settle the ques- 
tion for themselves. In a legal sense the 
Union, considered primarily as a union of 
States, was as yet neither proslavery nor 
antislavery. 

As to the expediency or necessity of com- 
promise, opinion then and since has differed 
widely. Leaders in Congress were, on the 
whole, inclined strongly to the belief that 
the compromise was necessary in order to 
save the Union, but not all agreed with 
Webster that peaceable secession was im- 
possible. Undoubtedly, the situation in 
1850 was grave; som.e, perhaps, would have 
welcomed a conflict at arms; yet the clearer 
light of the present day seems to indicate 
that peaceable separation without war was 
the calamity most to be feared if the com- 
promise failed. The South was united, the 
North divided, and Fillmore was no Jackson 
to coerce the one section or lead the other. 
From the European standpoint, the area of 
the United States was ample for the forma- 
tion of more than one nation; and the South 
had obvious unities of climate, soil, products, 
and social and political institutions which 
the North had not. Nor should we forget 
that in 1861, after a Southern confederacy 
had actually been formed and secession 
proclaimed, no steps to prevent disruption 
were taken until, having failed to obtain 



THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 (141 

Fort Sumter by negotiation, Confederate 
batteries compelled its surrender. 

So grave a crisis could only confront a 
nation whose political and social life was 
in unstable equilibrium. Ever since the 
War of 1812 the course of national politics, 
in spite of every effort to the contrary, 
had made for sectionalization. The struggles 
over protection, banks, and the subtreasury 
system; nullification in South Carolina; 
abolition literature and antislavery peti- 
tions; the annexation of Texas; Oregon 
and the Northern boundary; the Mexican 
War — every one of these questions, and 
the careers of the political parties which 
championed or opposed them, had widened 
rather than healed the breach. It can no 
longer be said, as it has commonly been 
said, that slavery was the root of section- 
alism. Recent studies of State and local 
politics, and especially of economic develop- 
ment, have shown how uneven and sectional, 
quite apart from slavery, was the develop- 
ment of agriculture, commerce, industry, 
and political thought throughout the United 
States prior to the Civil War. Instead of 
sectionalism arising because of slavery, it 
would be truer to say that slavery persisted 
because of sectionalism. 

But there inhered in slavery, even under 
the best conditions, that which made it a 
divisive and not a uniting force. Slavery 



142 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

separated races, repelled free labor, dis- 
couraged manufactures and trade, hindered 
the development of agriculture, fixed an 
impassable gulf between master and servant, 
stratified society, corrupted morals, and 
repressed free thought. In the midst of the 
prodigious industrial progress of the first 
half of the nineteenth century, it helped by 
sheer dead weight and immobility to keep 
the South stationary. And when, in their 
efforts to control the nation for their own 
self-interest, those whose eyes were blinded 
were joined, as they were after 1850, by 
those who sinned against the light, the strug- 
gle became one for self-preservation. If 
history teaches any lesson with unspotted 
clearness, it is that in such a struggle no 
legislative compromise, however skillfully 
contrived, can long avail. 

Nevertheless, for the moment the com- 
promise appeared to have achieved its pur- 
pose. To keep the question of slavery out 
of politics, and at the same time adjust the 
opposing interests of the sections, had been 
the aim of the Democrats; and in that 
aim the party had apparently once more 
succeeded. Senators and Representatives 
affirmed again and again that the Com^pro- 
mise of 1850 was a "finality." Fillmore, 
in his annual message of December, 1850, 
declared that "we have been rescued from 
the wide and boundless agitation that sur- 



THE COMPHOMISE OF 1850 143 

rounded us, and have a firm, distinct, 
and legal ground to rest upon." Douglas 
thought that it would not again be necessary 
for him to make a speech on the subject of 
slavery. 

Upon Webster, however, fell the weight 
of New England's condemnation. Webster 
had never sympathized with the abolition 
movement, nor was he a friend to slavery. 
So far as his public record went, he had 
stood with those who sought, by consti- 
tutional means, to restrict the growth of 
slavery. But his advocacy of the compro- 
mise, in his 7th of March speech, called down 
upon him from the Abolitionists the charge 
of apostasy; and the iron entered into his 
soul. 

** When faith is lost, when honor dies. 
The man is dead! 
Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze» 
And hide the shame! " 

So sang the poet Whittier of "Ichabod," 
the repudiated statesman of Massachusetts. 
In the face of such a charge, unjust, indeed, 
but invited, the formal testimonials of sup- 
porters and friends were but a feeble solace. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE UNITED STATES IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 

The nation which for the moment sought 
to accept the Compromise of 1850 as a 
"finaUty" was, in many important respects, 
quite different from what which, thirty 
years before, had struggled to achieve the 
Missouri Compromise. Heated discussion 
of slavery, foreign war, and the scope of the 
Constitution had not prevented or even 
checked the growth in industry and popula- 
tion w^hich throughout the nineteenth cen- 
tury made the United States a wonder 
among nations. If political quiet and sta- 
bility are, as has so often been said, the con- 
ditions most favorable to economic prosper- 
ity, the United States stood for more than 
fifty years a notable exception to the rule. 

In 1853, by the "Gadsden purchase," 
the United States acquired from Mexico 
an additional area of about 36,000 square 
miles. With this addition — the last, except 
Alaska, that has been made to the conti- 
nental limits of the United States — the 
jurisdiction of the federal government ex- 

144 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 145 

tended over an area about three and one- 
half times that of the original area in 1783. 
The wide variety of soil, climate and natural 
resource, joined to undisputed access to the 
Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico, 
made possible the growth of a varied agricul- 
ture, manufacture, and commerce; while the 
sterile character of much of the Mexican 
acquisitions was more than offset by the 
extraordinary mineral wealth of California. 

The population, which reached 12,800,000 
in 1830, grew to 17,000,000 in 1840 and to 
23,000,000 in 1850; in 1860 it had become 
31,400,000. The primacy of New York, 
with over 3,000,000 inhabitants, had been 
undisputed since 1820; but Pennsylvania 
had 2,300,000, Ohio nearly 2,000,000, Vir- 
ginia 1,400,000, and Tennesseeover 1,000,000, 
while Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, and 
Kentucky were near the million mark. Cali- 
fornia returned over 92,000 in 1850, and was 
to show in 1860 an unparalleled increase to 
379,000; in addition. New Mexico in 1850 
had 61,000, and Utah 11,000. Oregon, over 
whose possession the United States had 
nearly gone to war, had 13,000 population 
in 1850, while the new States of Iowa and 
Wisconsin showed 192,000 and 305,000 
respectively. 

The comparative growth of population 
in the free States and slave States showed, 
however, rapidly increasing divergence. A 



146 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

free State population of 5,100,000 in 1820 
became, in 1850, 13,500,000 and in 1860 
19,100,000. A slave State population, on 
the other hand, of 4,400,000 in 1820 became 
only 9,600,000 in 1850 and 12,300,000 in 

1860. The greatest gains were made in the 
"cotton belt" and in the border States of 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas; in 
the Atlantic coast States the growth was 
much less marked. As the census enumera- 
tion included negroes as well as whites, and 
as the average annual importations of Afri- 
cans, from 1820 to 1860, probably did not 
fall below 5000, it was evident that the 
white population of the South was steadily 
losing ground. 

A factor of increasing importance to the 
North was the swelling volume of foreign 
immigration. From 1845, when the figures 
reached 114,000, immigration grew rapidly, 
with unimportant fluctuations, until 1854, 
when over 427,000 aliens entered the country. 
After that there was a rapid decline until 

1861, the aggregate for 1854 not being 
reached again until 1873. Altogether, over 
4,000,000 immigrants arrived between 1845 
and 1860. While the proportion of the 
undesirable classes was large, far the greater 
number represented the sturdy middle and 
lower classes of northern Europe and the 
British Isles. Practically none went to the 
South, but nearly all settled down in the 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 147 

] manufacturing towns of the East, or went 
/ westward to establish themselves as farm- 
( ers, or pressed on to California to work in 
the mines. 

After 1830 the change from rural to urban 
life went on rapidly. The number of towns 
and cities with a population of 8000 or over 
rose from 44 in 1840 to 141 in 1860. The 
strongest factor in this urban growth was, 
of course, the development of manufactures 
and commerce, in both of which directions 
the North was once more at an advantage. 
The South did not accumulate the capital 
necessary for the establishment of factories 
or the construction of railroads; on the 
contrary, its relative wealth steadily de- 
clined, and it has been estimated that by 
1860 few of the larger plantations were self- 
supporting. The proceeds of staple crops, 
after the necessary expenditures for food, 
manufactured goods, and more slaves, quite 
as often netted a deficit as a surplus. A few 
Southern mills spun yarn or wove coarse 
fabrics, but only about seven per cent of 
the spindles in the United States in 1850 
were found in the South. Neither the coal 
nor the iron deposits of the South underwent 
any considerable development before the 
Civil War. 

The growth of population, especially in 
the West, necessitated better facilities for 
transportation than were afforded by turn- 



148 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

pikes and canals. By 1850 the rapid exten- 
sion of railways had connected Boston and 
New York with the Great Lakes and Chicago, 
Philadelphia with Pittsburg on the Ohio, 
and Baltimore with Wheeling on the Cum- 
berland. New England had a network of 
local lines. In the West liberal grants of 
land by the States were made in aid of 
railroads, and were supplemented by simi- 
lar grants from Congress. In the Atlantic 
coast States, where there were no public 
lands, subscriptions of stock in considerable 
amounts were made by the States. As yet, 
however, lines were short, differences of 
gauge caused frequent changes for passen- 
gers and freight, and dividends were possi- 
ble only in thickly populated sections. With 
the railroad, and frequently in advance of 
it, went the telegraph, which in 1848 reached 
Milwaukee and New Orleans. 

Outside of New England, however, it 
was only the larger communities that, prior 
to 1860, were served by railroads. In country 
districts, and in the great West beyond the 
railway termini, the traveler must still 
resort to the stagecoach or private convey- 
ance. Beyond the western boundary of 
Missouri mails for the Pacific coast were 
carried, from 1852 to 1860, by the daring 
riders of the Pony Express. The journey by 
stage from St. Louis to California could be 
made, in 1858, in about four weeks. Even 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES ,149 

in New England the remoter towns of Maine, 
New Hampshire, and Vermont depended 
upon stage lines for their communication 
with the outside world. It was the policy 
of the federal government to carry the 
mails wherever there was an appreciable 
settlement, the larger offices paying in part 
for the smaller. The number of post-offices 
increased from 3000 in 1815 to 28,000 in 
1860, the mileage of the routes from 43,000 
to 240,000, and the receipts from $1,000,000 
to $8,500,000. 

The gain in wealth and financial stability 
was strikingly shown in the financial man- 
agement of the Mexican War. The war 
added less than $50,000,000 to the national 
debt. Loans were made in specie, at par or 
over, and in one notable case the loan was 
more than three times over-subscribed. 
The California mines, by adding enormously 
to the stock of gold in the country, aided 
the negotiation of specie loans and assured 
the maintenance of specie payment by the 
government. The rapid growth of com- 
merce, particularly with England, and of 
trade with the West, swelled the customs 
receipts, w^hile the expanding immigration 
stimulated the sales of public lands. By 
1857 the public debt, which amounted six 
years before to over $68,000,000, had been 
reduced to $28,000,000. The weak spot in 
the financial situation was the State banks. 



150 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

whose note issues, often subject to no effi- 
cient regulation by law, formed a currency 
of unstable value. 

For ten years after the enactment of the 
Walker Tariff, in 1846, American politics 
was largely free from tariff discussion. By 
1857, however, the reduction of the debt, 
together with the continuance of large im- 
portations, made it necessary to deal with 
the surplus. In March, accordingly, the 
rates were materially lowered, except on 
cotton, and considerable additions made 
to the free list. In August a disastrous 
commercial panic sv/ept over the country; 
merchants and bankers failed, railroads 
went bankrupt, and specie payment ^ was 
suspended. While the advocates of higher 
duties ascribed the panic primarily to the 
tariff changes, the larger cause was to be 
found, as usual, in a decade of remarkable 
industrial development, excessive railroad 
building, unsound banking, and speculation. 

The next few years proved to be a period 
of difficulty and uncertainty for the treasury. 
In the meantime the new Republican party, 
which took the field for the first time in 
the presidential election of 1856, made pro- 
tection one of its chief tenets; and its suc- 
cess in the election of 1860 was followed, in 
March, 1861, by the enactment of the Morrill 
Tariff with low but moderately protective 
duties. 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 151 

Neither devotion to industry, agriculture, 
and commerce, however, nor insistence upon 
the "finality" of compromise, could long 
banish the slavery issue from the public 
mind. The first year of Fillmore's adminis- 
tration had not ended when the attempted 
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law tore 
open afresh a wound which many a politi- 
cal leader had declared was forever healed. 

The Act of 1850 authorized the owner of 
a fugitive slave, or his agent, to cause the 
arrest of the fugitive in any State whither 
he might have fled, and to obtain a summary 
hearing of the case before a circuit or dis- 
trict court of the United States, or before 
one of the federal commissioners especially 
appointed to aid in the enforcement of the 
act. Legal proofs of ownership were re- 
quired to be submitted, but the fugitive 
was prohibited from testifying in his own 
behalf. If the court or commissioner ad- 
judged the fugitive to be the property of 
the claimant, he was to be delivered to the 
owner or agent, and federal marshals and 
their deputies were required to use all 
necessary means to insure the safe return 
of the fugitive to the State from which he 
had fled, and were made liable in heavy 
penalties if he escaped or was rescued. In 
the performance of their duties under the 
act, marshals were authorized to require 
the aid of bystanders or of the posse comi- 



152 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

tatus of the county. Any one who attempted 
to prevent the return of a fugitive slave, or 
aided him to escape, was to be fined a thou- 
sand dollars, and mulcted a similar amount in 
damages to the injured owner or claimant. 

Fillmore was advised by Webster, his 
Secretary of State, and Crittenden, his 
Attorney-General, that the proposed act 
was constitutional, and signed the bill; but 
there were serious objections to the act on 
other grounds than those of constitution- 
ality. The appearance of slave hunters in 
the North would be certain to arouse all 
the slumbering hostility of the free States 
to slavery; while the summary character 
of the proceedings, and the denial to the 
alleged fugitive of the right to testify in 
his own behalf, not only reversed the time- 
honored legal presumption of innocence, 
but made it difficult even for free negroes 
to protect themselves. Moreover, while 
the act was intended to protect the slave 
owner in the enjoyment of his property, 
fugitive slaves in fact came chiefly from the 
Border States, where the relative number of 
slaves was least. 

How serious the situation was with which 
this drastic statute was designed to cope 
was variously estimated. The census of 
1850 reported the number of slaves who 
escaped to the free States in that year as 
1011; in 1860 the number was 803, or one- 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 153 

thirtieth of one per cent of the total slave 
population. The most liberal estimate, on 
the basis of these figures, would make the 
annual number of fugitives from 1840 to 
1850 not greater than the number reported 
for the latter year; a maximum of 10,000 
for the decade preceding the enactment of 
the law. It may well be doubted if more 
than half of that number actually escaped. 
Yet Clingman, a member of Congress from 
North Carolina, estimated the number of 
fugitives in the North at 30,000, and their 
value at $15,000,000! In neither estimate 
is any account taken of the number of 
fugitives captured and returned.^ 

Already, before the Compromise of 1850, 
a number of Northern States had taken 
steps to protect fugitive slaves who might 
come within their jurisdiction; and such 
legislation greatly increased after 1850. In 
New England, New York, Pennsylvania, 
and other States, "personal liberty laws" 
gave to fugitives the benefits of the writ of 
habeas corpus, or forbade a claimant to 
testify save in writing, or prohibited the use 
of prisons and jails for the detention of 
accused negroes. In Boston and elsewhere 
committees of prominent citizens were formed 
to give notice of the arrival of a slave hunter, 
provide counsel for the fugitive, and make 
possible his escape. No State was, indeed, 

* Rhodes, United States, I, 378, note 3. 



LO 



4 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 



bound to enforce a federal statute, but it was 
bound not to obstruct the enforcement. The 
intense and widespread opposition to the 
law, however, overrode constitutional re- 
straints and put large sections of the North 
for the time being in open hostility to the 
federal government. The attempted nulli- 
fication of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 by 
South Carolina was now matched by the 
attempted nullification of the Fugitive Slave 
law of 1850 by almost the entire North. 

The enforcement of the act was not long 
delayed.! On the 15th of February, 1851, 
a negro named Shadrach was arrested in 
Boston, charged with being a fugitive slave. 
The federal commissioner, George Ticknor 
Curtis, adjourned the case to the next day 
in order that the accused might obtain 
counsel. A mob of negroes stormed the 
court-house in which Shadrach was confined 
and rescued the prisoner, who eventually 
made good his escape to Canada. President 
Fillmore at once issued a proclamation con- 
demning the lawless proceedings and direct- 
ing the prosecution of the offenders; but 
although five persons were indicted and 
tried, a disagreement of the jury prevented 
conviction. 

On the 3d of April a second fugitive, 
named Sims, was apprehended in Boston. 

1 For details of the cases cited here and later, see Rhodes, 
United States, I, 208 et seq. 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 155 

This time the court-house was protected 
by heavy chains and strongly guarded. 
Sims was found guilty, and with the aid of 
three hundred policemen and a regiment of 
militia, and to the accompaniment of toUing 
church bells, was placed on board a vessel 
to be returned to Georgia. 

At Christiana, Pennsylvania, a slave- 
holder named Gorsuch, who with a party 
was searching for two fugitives from Mary- 
land, precipitated a general fight with a body 
of negroes and others, in which Gorsuch was 
killed and his son wounded. A Quaker, 
Hanaway, who had refused to aid the mar- 
shal accompanying Gorsuch, was tried and 
acquitted. At Syracuse, New York, an 
alleged fugitive named Jerry McHenry was 
rescued from the pohce station by a party 
of ^ men led by Samuel J. May, a Unitarian 
minister, and Gerritt Smith, an abolitionist 
and member of Congress, and aided to 
escape to Canada. May and Smith issued 
a statement telling of their part in the ajffair, 
but the United States district attorney was 
afraid to try them; and of eighteen others 
indicted, none were convicted. 

At the close of his annual message in 
December, 1851, Fillmore again insisted 
upon the constitutionality of the Fugitive 
Slave law, pointed out that the law was 
necessary in order to give effect to the pro- 
vision of the Constitution regarding? fupi- 



156 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

tive slaves, and declared that the opposition 
was directed, not against the act, but 
against the Constitution itself. "It is not 
to be disguised that a spirit exists, and has 
been actively at work, to rend asunder this 
Union." Fillmore was hardly a man to 
give weight to moral issues in politics: the 
letter of the law, duly enacted according 
to the approved procedure, was enough 
for him. That an aroused public opinion, 
usually in advance of the prescriptions of the 
statute book, could openly repudiate and 
publicly nullify a law whose constitutional- 
ity most lawyers felt bound to affirm, was 
to him inconceivable. Doubtless the situa- 
tion was exceedingly difficult, legally, politi- 
cally, and morally, but it was not given to 
Fillmore to lead the people in this time of 
crisis. 

The publication in March, 1852, of Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
was like adding oil to the fire. Mrs. Stowe 
had little personal contact with slavery, 
although she knew well the literature of the 
subject; and she undoubtedly emphasized 
the dreadful incidents of the system rather 
than its general characteristics. But the 
tragic and pathetic story of devotion, suff- 
ering, death, and escape, written under the 
campus trees of Bowdoin College by a poor 
and unknown woman, touched the heart of 
the American people; and while the South 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 157 

denounced the book as a gross and vicious 
libel, the men and women of the North who 
wept over it were becoming thereby more 
inflexible opponents of the hateful system. 
The novel was easily one of the most suc- 
cessful ever written, and to unprecedented 
sales in this country and in England were 
presently added large sales of translations 
into German, French, and other languages. 

The enforcement of the law of 1850, 
together with the new interest aroused by 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," stirred to increased 
activity the work of the "Underground 
Railway." ^ Throughout the North, but 
especially in Pennsylvania and the States 
bordering on the Ohio River, were many 
earnest antislavery men and women ready 
to help the escape of fugitive slaves. Work- 
ing in secrecy, and adopting the terminology 
of a railroad the better to conceal their 
operations, there shortly came to be some- 
thing like a system of "stations," "trunk 
lines," "junctions," etc., for caring for 
fugitives and convoying them to Canada. 
Any slave who could succeed in crossing 
the Ohio was pretty certain of finding food, 
clothing, shelter, protection, and guidance 
from "conductors" and "agents." Members 
of the Society of Friends, long consistent 
enemies of slavery, were especially promi- 
nent in the movement, while the hazard 
of the work, as well as its humanitarian 



158 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

purpose, added to its fascination. The 
aggregate results, of course, were small, 
but the willingness of otherwise law-abiding 
citizens to set a federal law at defiance, 
joined to the "personal liberty laws" of 
Northern legislatures, showed again how 
thoroughly the moral revolt was spreading. 
Men who gladly risked their freedom and 
their lives for the freedom and lives of others 
were not to be deceived by talk about the 
constitutionality or finality of compromise. 

In spite, however, of the activity of the 
*' Underground Railway," and of the chag- 
rin and horror which every forcible return 
of a fugitive aroused, it became clear that, 
throughout the greater part of the North, 
the antislavery agitation was quieting down. 
Webster, though humiliated at the charge 
of apostasy, continued to urge acceptance 
of the compromise until his death, in 1852. 
Everywhere was observable a strenuous 
effort to regard the controversy as settled. 
The large Democratic majority in both 
houses of Congress, in 1851-53, was an unmis- 
takable evidence of popular satisfaction, 
since the elections had taken place in the 
fall of 1850, when the debates over the 
compromise were fresh in mind. Both 
the President and Congress were in accord, 
the slavery question was kept as much as 
possible out of debate, and Fillmore's recom- 
mendations were, in general, approved. 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 159 

When, accordingly, in June, 1852, the 
Democrats met in national convention at 
Baltimore, the outlook was bright. The 
split in the party, which had cost them the 
election of 1848, was now healed. The 
leading presidential candidate was Cass, 
who had headed the ticket in the previous 
campaign; but Buchanan, Douglas, and 
Marcy had each a strong following. Neither 
of these candidates, however, proved able 
to command the necessary two-thirds vote, 
and on the forty-ninth ballot a "dark 
horse," Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, 
was nominated. The vice-presidential nomi- 
nation was given to William R. King of 
Alabama. The platform, adopted after 
the candidates had been nominated, was in 
the main a repetition of the platform of 
1848, with the addition of resolutions pledg- 
ing the party to a faithful execution of the 
compromise measures, and condemning "all 
attempts at renewing, in Congress or out 
of it, the agitation of the slavery question, 
under whatever shape or color the at- 
tempt may be made." The reading of 
the resolution concerning the compromise 
measures was received with tumultuous 
applause. 

The Whigs, who met at Baltimore two 
v/eeks later, were badly divided as to both 
principles and candidates. The compromise 
had forever ahenated the radical antislavery 



160 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

and free soil members. The candidate of 
the Northern Whigs was General Scott; 
of the Southern, Fillmore; while Webster, 
who had the support of New England except 
Maine, was assured of some Southern votes 
also. On the fifty-third ballot Scott was 
chosen. The platform, pledging the party 
to a "strict enforcement" of the measures 
of 1850, and deprecating all further agita- 
tion of the question "whenever, wherever, 
or however the attempt may be made," 
might as well have been written by the 
Democrats, and was in fact carried by 
Southern votes. 

A convention of Free Soil Democrats at 
Pittsburgh denounced slavery as "a sin 
against God and a crime against man," de- 
clared that "slavery is sectional and freedom 
national," and nominated John P. Hale of 
New Hampshire. As most of the Free Soilers 
who had acted independently in 1848 had 
now gone back to either the Democratic 
or the Whig ranks, the Pittsburgh conven- 
tion, as its platform shows, represented only 
the irreconcilable antislavery radicals and 
Abolitionists. 

The campaign was uneventful. The most 
that could be said for Pierce was that he 
was a respectable gentleman, entirely in 
accord with the platform of his party; but 
even the literary skill of his friend and 
classmate, Hawthorne, who wrote his cam- 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 161 

paign biography, could not make him inter- 
esting. The only claim of Scott, familiarly 
known in army circles as **Fuss and Feath- 
ers," was his military record. Neither 
candidate, accordingly, awakened enthu- 
siasm, but the Democrats were united where 
the Whigs were divided, and union brought 
victory. Pierce received 254 electoral votes 
against 42 for Scott. Of the thirty-one 
States which took part in the election, only 
four — Vermont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee — supported the Whig candi- 
dates. Never had a party met a more crush- 
ing defeat. It was popularly said that the 
Whig party died of an attempt to swallow 
the Fugitive Slave law; but that law was, 
after all, only the most offensive incident of 
a system which the North was rapidly 
repudiating as a whole, and in regard to 
which the Whigs were no longer able to 
speak either clearly or unitedly. 

Leaders, too, as well as parties were chang- 
ing. Clay died at Washington, June 29, 
hopeful to the last of beneficent results 
from the compromise which he had labored 
to frame. Webster, with unabated love 
for the Union, but broken-hearted at the 
denunciations of his former supporters and 
the loss of the presidency, passed away at 
Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 23. Ben- 
ton, for thirty years Senator from Missouri, 
had met defeat at last in 1850, though he 



162 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

presently secured an election to the House 
of Representatives. The political tasks 
of the future were for other hands than 
those which for a generation had directed 
them. 

The years immediately following the war 
with Mexico saw the rise of a number of 
important diplomatic questions, with some 
of which slavery was indirectly involved. 
The spirit of "manifest destiny," inspired 
by the acquisition of territory on the 
Pacific, joined to Northern hostility to 
territorial enhancement of slavery, bred, 
on the one hand, an arrogant temper in 
regard to Europe, and, on the other, cau- 
tion in dealing with the countries to the 
south. 

One result of the revolution of 1848 in 
Austria was the establishment of a short- 
lived Hungarian republic. The dispatch 
of an American agent to extend recognition 
to the new State, in case it should prove 
permanent, drew from Austria a protest. 
Webster, the Secretary of State, in a letter 
to Hiilsemann, the Austrian charge d'af- 
faires at Washington, upheld with vigor the 
right of the United States to express its 
sympathy with struggling people anywhere. 
"The power of this repubhc," he wrote, 
"at the present moment is spread over a 
region one of the richest and most fertile on 
the globe, and of an extent in comparison 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 163 

with which the possessions of the House of 
Hapsburg are but a patch on the earth's 
surface. . . . Nothing will deter either 
the Government or the people of the United 
States from exercising, at their own discre- 
tion, the rights belonging to them as an 
independent nation, and of forming and 
expressing their own opinions, freely and 
at all times, upon the great political events 
which may transpire among the civilized 
nations of the earth." Webster admitted 
that the letter was "boastful and rough," 
but justified himself on the ground that it 
was well to "speak out," and that the 
letter would appeal to the national pride 
and make disunion contemptible. 

The discovery of gold in California raised 
the question of the control of the isthmian 
passages between Panama and Tehuantepec, 
across which emigrants were traveling in 
increasing numbers. The best route for a 
ship canal was believed to be that of the 
San Juan River and its connecting lakes, 
in the State of Nicaragua. Great Britain, 
however, claimed a protectorate over the 
Mosquito Indians on the east coast of 
Nicaragua; and although the validity of 
the claim was denied by the United States, 
the construction of a canal or other highway 
without British consent would be likely 
to provoke war. In 1850 Clayton, Secretary 
of State, concluded with Sir Henry Lytton 



164 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Bulwer, British minister at Washington, a 
treaty by which the two powers agreed to 
aid in the construction of an interoceanic 
canal across the isthmus, to guarantee its 
neutrahty, and to invite other nations to 
join in the guarantee. At the same time 
control or dominion over Nicaragua, Costa 
Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any other part 
of Central America was mutually renounced. 
A dispute over the extent of British authority 
in the region, culminating in the bombard- 
ment of Greytown, at the mouth of the 
San Juan River, by a United States vessel 

^^in 1854, was left for later settlement. 

^ Relations with Cuba were difficult through- 
out Fillmore's administration. An intima- 
tion, in 1848, of a willingness on the part of 
the United States to purchase the island had 
drawn from Spain the reply that *' sooner 
than see the island transferred to any power 
they would prefer seeing it sunk in the 
ocean." In the South, however, where the 
desire for annexation was pronounced, a 
willing ear was given to reports that the 
Cubans were ready to revolt; and the 
government found it impossible to prevent 
filibustering. When in August, 1851, the 
leading agitator, Lopez, was captured and 
executed by the Spanish authorities in Cuba, 
and fifty of his followers, some of them 
prominent young men from the South, 
were court-martialed and shot, a mob at 



IN THE EARLY FIFTIES 165 

New Orleans retaliated by attacking the 
Spanish consulate and looting Spanish shops. 
For this outbreak the United States properly 
made reparation.^ 

^ T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery, 82, 83. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 

It was to the credit of President Pierce 
that he made no attempt to conceal or 
qualify his opinions on the question of | 
slavery. "I believe," he declared in his 
inaugural, *'that involuntary servitude, as 
it exists in different States of this Confeder- 
acy, is recognized by the Constitution. I 
believe that it stands like any other admitted 
right, and that the States where it exists 
are entitled to efficient remedies to enforce 
the constitutional provisions. I hold that 
the laws of 1850, commonly called the 
'compromise measures,' are strictly con- 
stitutional and to be unhesitatingly carried 
into effect. I believe that the constitutional 
authorities of this Republic are bound to 
regard the rights of the South in this respect 
as they would view any other legal and 
constitutional right, and that the laws to 
enforce them should be respected and obeyed, 
not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract 
opinions as to their propriety in a different 
state of society, but cheerfully and ac- 

166 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 167 

cording to the decisions of the tribunal to 
which their exposition belongs. Such have 
been, and are, my convictions, and upon 
them I shall act." 

So frank a declaration of opinion by the 
chief magistrate of the nation would be 
significant at any time, but in this case the 
significance arose, not from the character of 
Pierce, but from the circumstances under 
which the words were uttered. 

The Territory of Missouri, organized by 
act of Congress in 1812, comprised all of the 
original Louisiana purchase except the State 
of Louisiana, which was admitted to the 
Union the same year. The area was reduced 
by the organization of the Territory of 
Arkansas in 1819. Upon the admission of 
Missouri as a State, in 1821, the territorial 
organization lapsed, and the portion of the 
former Territory not embraced within the 
boundaries of the new State became again 
public domain, without governmental organ- 
ization of any sort. In 1834, when the so- 
called Indian Territory was set apart, whites 
were excluded from the whole region save 
as traders and missionaries. In the same 
year the region north of Missouri and east 
of the Missouri River was annexed to Mich- 
igan Territory, and in 1836 the western 
boundary of Missouri, north of the junction 
of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, was 
extended to the latter river. 



168 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

For many years after the admission of 
Missouri the unorganized territory to the 
west continued to be called Missouri, the 
name gradually giving way to those of 
Kansas, Nebraska, or the "Platte country." 
The Santa Fe and Oregon trails carried an 
increasing overland commerce to Mexico, 
California, and Oregon, while a few mili- 
tary posts, the principal one being that of 
Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri River, 
helped to keep hostile Indians in check. 

As early as 1844 the Secretary of War, 
"Wilkins, urged by the growth of the over- 
land trade and the increasing migration to 
Oregon, recommended the organization of 
a territorial government under the name of 
Nebraska, as prehminary to the establish- 
ment of further military posts. Stephen A. 
Douglas, who had just entered Congress as 
a Representative from Illinois, at once 
introduced a bill for the purpose, but no 
action was taken by the House. The matter 
rested until March, 1848, when Douglas, 
now a member of the Senate, again intro- 
duced a Nebraska bill, which likewise came 
to nothing. A third bill in December was 
considered by the Senate and recommitted. 

The Compromise of 1850 did not affect 
the Nebraska country, which, so far as 
slavery was concerned, rested under the 
prohibition of the Missouri Compromise of 
1820. The unwillingness of Texas to be 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 169 

subdivided, however, and the unHkeHhood 
that slavery would ever be profitable, if 
indeed it were even permitted, in New 
Mexico or Utah, left the South with no 
territorial advantage as a result of the com- 
promise. It was not likely, therefore, that 
the vast region west of the Missouri River 
would long escape notice, even though, by 
a solemn agreement now a generation old, 
slavery had been forever excluded from it. 

In December, 1852, Representative Hall 
of Missouri introduced in the House a bill to 
organize the Territory of Platte. On Febru- 
ary 2 the chairman of the Committee on 
Territories, Richardson of Illinois, reported 
to the House a bill to organize the Territory 
of Nebraska. By a vote of 98 to 43 the bill 
passed the House, but the Senate, by a vote 
of 23 to 17, refused to consider it. The bill 
did not propose to legislate slavery into the 
new Territory, and the votes in opposition, 
given chiefly by Southern members, indi- 
cated a plan, already somewhat formed, to 
set aside the Missouri Compromise on 
the ground that the principle of popular 
sovereignty had superseded it. The Demo- 
crats, meantime, had won the election of 
1852, and on the 4th of March, 1853, Pierce 
had announced his policy in the words just 
quoted from his inaugural. 

The Thirty-third Congress, which met 
December 5, 1853, had in the Senate oQ 



170 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Democrats, 20 Whigs, and 2 Free Soilers; 
and in the House 159 Democrats, 71 Whigs, 
and 4 Free Soilers. As compared with the 
previous Congress, the Democratic majority 
showed an increase in both branches. On 
the 14th of December Senator Dodge of 
Iowa introduced a bill to organize the 
Territory of Nebraska; Miller of Missouri 
followed on the 22d with a similar bill in the 
House; and the last great legislative battle 
over slavery began. 

The Senate bill, substantially identical 
with the bill reported from the Committee 
on Territories the previous February, pro- 
vided for the organization as one Territory 
of the whole region included between the 
parallels of 36° 30' (the southern boundary 
of Missouri) and 43° 30' on the south and 
north, Missouri and Iowa on the east, and 
the Rocky Mountains on the west. The 
bill went in regular course to the Committee 
on Territories, of which Douglas was chair- 
man. 

On the 4th of January, 1854, Douglas 
reported from the committee a substitute 
for the Dodge bill, incorporating the pro- 
vision regarding slavery that had been 
included in the acts organizing the Terri- 
tories of New Mexico and Utah, in 1850, 
together with provisions for the faithful 
execution in the new Territory of the Fugi- 
tive Slave law. In the opinion of the com- 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 171 

mittee, the measures of 1850 "were iiitcMidcd 
to have a far more comprehensive and 
enduring effect than the mere adjustment 
of the difficulties arising out of the recent 
acquisition of Mexican territory." They 
were intended, rather, "to establish certain 
great principles which would not only fur- 
nish adequate remedies for existing eviLs, 
but in all time to come, avoid the perils of 
a similar agitation by withdrawing the 
question of slavery from the halls of Congress 
and the political arena, and committing it to 
the arbitrament of those who were imme- 
diately interested in, and alone resi)onsible 
for its consequences." For this reason, and 
because Nebraska occupied "the same rehi- 
tive position to the slavery question" as 
did Utah and New Mexico, the committee 
thought proper to "perpetuate" those prin- 
ciples in the pending bill. 

On the question of the validity of the 
Missouri Compromise the committee ex- 
pressed no opinion, beyond stating concisely 
the arguments for and against the rigid of 
Congress to enact such a prohibition. As 
Congress, in the legislation of ISoO, neitluT 
affirmed nor repealed the preexisting anli- 
slavery laws of Mexico, nor declared its 
view of the extent of constitutional authority 
over slave property in the Territories, the 
committee saw no reason for reviving the 
question now. 



172 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Did Douglas mean to repeal the Missouri 
Compromise? Had the "principles of 1850" 
superseded that of 1820, especially in view 
of the fact that the two bodies of legislation 
applied to different regions? Could popular 
sovereignty be established in Nebraska 
without first repealing the prohibition of 
1820? The most careful scrutiny of the com- 
mittee report failed to show a clear answer 
to these questions. 

To neither party, accordingly, was the 
amended bill acceptable. In order to clear 
it of obscurity, Senator Dixon of Ken- 
tucky, on January 16, gave notice of an 
amendment excepting the proposed Terri- 
tory from the operation of the Missouri 
Compromise and opening it to slavery; to 
which Charles Sumner of Massachusetts 
replied the following day with an amend- 
ment expressly continuing in force in Neb- 
raska the slavery prohibition of 1820. 

On the 23d several new amendments were 
reported from the committee. There were 
now to be two Territories, Kansas and 
Nebraska, instead of one, the southern 
boundary of Kansas being also changed from 
36° 30' to 37°, and the northern boundary 
of Nebraska from 43° 30' to 43°. The 
slavery issue was met by an amendment 
declaring the Missouri Compromise inopera- 
tive in the two Territories, on the ground 
that it had been "superseded" by the com- 



THE MISSOURI COMPRO:\rTSE 173 

promise measures of 1850. The l)ill with 
these changes Douglas moved to subslilute 
for the bill originally reported. 

The next day appeared an "Appeal of 
the Independent Democrats in Congress to 
the People of the United States," (hited 
January 19, and signed by Chase, Giddiims, 
and Wade of Ohio, Sumner and De Witl Of 
Massachusetts, and Gerritt Smith of New 
York. The *' Appeal" arraigned the bill as 
*'a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a 
criminal betrayal of precious rights; as 
part and parcel of an atrocious plot to ex- 
clude from a vast unoccupied region immi- 
grants from the old world, and free laborers 
from our own States, and convert it into a 
dreary region of despotism, inhabited by 
masters and slaves." It warned the count rv 

« 

that "the dearest interests of freedom and 
the Union are in imminent peril," charged 
Douglas with bad faith, and declared that 
the Union could be maintained only "by 
the full recognition of the just claims of 
freedom and man." 

The debate which began January 30 and 
continued until March 3 was of unparalK^led 
bitterness, and aroused the whole country. 
Douglas, familiarly known as the "Little 
Giant," was a masterful debater, and with 
the firm support of the President an<l the 
Southern Whigs was assured of votes enough 
to pass the bill; but its opponents fought 



174 FEOM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

him desperately at every point. Douglas 
had declared in 1849, in a speech at Spring- 
field, Ohio, that the Missouri Compromise 
"had become canonized in the hearts of the 
American people, as a sacred thing which 
no ruthless hand would ever be reckless 
enough to disturb." Now, however, with 
revised opinions, he made a violent attack 
upon Chase and the signers of the "Appeal," 
asserting that "this tornado has been raised 
by abolitionists and abolitionists alone," 
and accusing them of "a falsification of the 
law and of the facts." 

Chase, in one of his greatest speeches, 
riddled the slavery provisions of the bill 
from end to end. "The truth is," he de- 
clared, "the compromise acts of 1850 were 
not intended to introduce any principle of 
territorial organization to any other Terri- 
tory except that covered by them." If the 
advocates of slavery wished to repeal the 
Missouri Compromise, let them "do it 
openly, do it boldly. . . . Do not declare 
it 'inoperative' because superseded by the 
principles of the legislation of 1850." If 
this bill is passed, "it will light up a fire in 
the country which may, perhaps, consume 
those who kindle it." 

To meet the weighty objection that, under 
our system, one law cannot "supersede" 
another, Douglas, on the 6th of February, 
offered an amendment substituting for the 



THE MISSOURI CO^MPROMISE 17 



to 



clause "which was superseded by," tlie 
clause "which is inconsistent with/' The 
dilemma was still as great as before, sonic 
strong advocates of the bill still insisting 
that the only way to get rid of a hiw was to 
repeal it. The next day Douglas took the 
final step by proposing an amendment extend- 
ing to the proposed Territories the Consti- 
tution and such laws of the United States as 
were not locally inapplicable, except the 
prohibitory section of the INIissouri act, 
"which, being inconsistent with the ])riu- 
ciple of non-intervention by Congress with 
slavery in the States and Territories, is 
hereby declared inoperative and void; it 
being the true intent and meaning of this 
act not to legislate slavery into any Terri- 
tory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, 
but to leave the people thereof perfectly free 
to form and regulate their domestic insti- 
tutions in their own way, subject only to 
the Constitution of the United States/' 

The adoption of this amendment, Febru- 
ary 15, was followed on March 4, after an 
all-night session,^ by the passage of the bill. 
Twenty-eight Democrats and nine AVhigs, 
all of the latter from the slave States, fur- 
nished the majority. The fourteen negative 
votes were cast by two Free Soilers, one 
Southern and six Northern Whigs, and one 
Southern and four Northern Democrats. 

^ The legislative date is, of course, Marcli 3. 



176 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

We must now turn to the House of 
Representatives. On the 22d of December 
Representative Miller of Missouri intro- 
duced in that body a bill to organize the 
Territory of Nebraska. The Committee on 
Territories changed the bill into one for the 
organization of two Territories, Kansas and 
Nebraska, and in that form it was reported 
by Richardson on January 31. The bill did 
not disturb the slavery prohibition of the 
Missouri Compromise, but a minority report, 
submitted by English of Indiana, urged the 
application of the principle of popular sover- 
eignty to the proposed Territories. 

The bill as reported was not taken up 
for formal consideration until May 8. On 
the 14th of February, however, an irregular 
debate on slavery, compromise, and the pro- 
visions of the Senate and House bills began, 
which continued, regardless of the business 
nominally before the House, for ten wrecks. 
The Senate bill, coming over to the House, 
was put on the calendar March 21, and ap- 
parently buried. 

In the meantime Congress was not left 
in ignorance of the excited state of public 
feeling. A furious torrent of ^ speeches, 
resolutions, sermons, and editorials burst 
from the North upon the President, Douglas, 
and the South, sweeping to destruction the 
"finality" and labored peace upon which 
the reunited Democracy had felicitated it- 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 177 

self. On the 14tli of March Edward Everott 
submitted to the Senate the protest of three 
thousand New England clergy against the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Douglas, forgetting 
his usual courtesy, declared that the signers 
had "desecrated the pulpit and prostituted 
the sacred desk to the miserable and cor- 
rupting influence of party politics." A New 
York paper stated on March 15 that, up to 
that time, between two and three hundred 
large public meetings in the North had 
denounced the bill, against less than half a 
dozen that had approved it. The legislatures 
of New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode 
Island, and Wisconsin, the last three Demo- 
cratic States, passed resolutions of protest. 

But the course of the measure was not 
to be stayed. On the 8th of Ma}^ Richardson 
called up the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Eight- 
een bills and resolutions preceded the House 
bill, which was identical with the original 
Senate bill, on the calendar: these were one 
by one laid aside, each time with a dcTuand 
for the yeas and nays and a calling of the 
roll. A substitute, identical with the Senate 
bill save for a provision restricting suffrage 
and office-holding to citizens of the United 
States, was then offered for the House bill, 
and debate began. 

Every device known to parliauKMiiary 
law was resorted to to oi)]>ose the bill, or 
to amend it, or to delay its passage. On 



178 FROM JEFFERSON TO LmCOLN 

Thursday and Friday, May 11 and 12, the 
House was in continuous session for thirty- 
six hours. Bitter recrimination and attack, 
angry personal exchanges, and drunkenness 
marked the proceedings, and an open fight 
was narrowly averted. It was all to no pur- 
pose. Douglas was at hand to aid with his 
presence and advice; party newspapers 
had already declared that no Democrat who 
voted against the bill could expect further 
recognition from the administration; and 
the majority, though small, was united. 
Shortly before midnight of the 22d the bill 
was passed. 

Of the 113 affirmative votes, all but 12 
were given by Democrats; but of the 100 
who voted in the negative, 42 were Northern 
Democrats, 2 were Southern Democrats, 
and 7 were Southern Whigs. Benton, who 
had been elected to the House after his defeat 
in the senatorial contest of 1850, had been 
unceasing in his opposition to the bill, and 
voted against it. 

Douglas championed the bill in the Senate, 
and a violent debate of two days marked its 
passage by that body. Sumner put the case 
in a nutshell when he declared that the 
measure was "at once the worst and the 
best bill on which Congress ever acted. . . . 
It annuls all past compromises with slavery, 
and makes all future compromises impos- 
sible. Thus it puts freedom and slavery 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 179 

face to face, and bids them jrrapplo." On 
the 26th the bill passed the Senate witliout 
a division, and on the 30th it received the 
approving signature of President Pierce. 

One cannot read the history of this 
remarkable episode without speculating as 
to the motive of Douglas. Douglas was an 
able lawyer, a skilled parliamentarian, a 
practical politician, and the greatest deljater 
of his time. He had been in Congress during 
the session of 1850, and was famihar not 
only with what was said and done at that 
time in regard to slavery in the Territories, 
but with the temper and point of view of 
the men who advocated and opposed the 
legislation of that year. No man in ])ubHc 
life needed less that any one should tell liiin 
how important it was for the Democrats 
that the slavery question should be ke])t 
out of politics, or how instant and out- 
spoken would be the opposition if tlie 
slavery interests were again openly favored. 
Why, then, did he reopen a question which 
weighty political reasons apparently dic- 
tated should remain closed.? 

The charge that he acted in the matter 
as the agent and spokesman of the South, 
which section, it was averred, demancknl 
the repeal of the Missouri Coni])romise. 
was more than once made in debate, and 
in the North was widely believed, 'riie 
charge cannot be maintained. Senator Clay- 



180 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

ton of Delaware stated the case accurately 
when he said, three days before Douglas's 
bill passed the Senate: "This proposition 
to repeal the Missouri Compromise did not 
originate with Southern men. It comes from 
the North. The Senator from Illinois 
[Douglas] is its reputed author. The Com- 
mittee on Territories, of which he is the 
chairman, composed of a majority of North- 
ern men, authorized him to report it. We 
know that a majority of Northern Senators 
here concur with him in pressing its repeal 
upon us. The Southern Senators .^ . . 
have not refused to accede to it. With a 
vote almost unanimous they will accede 
to it, especially as it is known to be supported 
by a Northern President, and^ a cabinet 
composed of a Northern majority. I did 
not ask for it. . . . I do not believe it will 
repay us for the agitation and irritation it 
has cost. But can a Senator whose constitu- 
ents hold slaves be expected to resist and 
refuse what the North thus freely offers as 
a measure due to us.^^" 

The charge, frequently made at the time 
and often repeated, that the bill was brought 
forward to help out a weak administration 
and further Douglas's aspirations for the 
presidency, was roughly voiced by Cullom 
of Tennessee during the House debate. 
*'This bill, sir, should be on the private 
calendar, and the title of it should be so 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 181 

amended as to read, 'A bill to make great 
men out of small ones, and to sacrifice the 
public peace and prosperity upon the altar 
of political ambition' . . . The author 
of this movement was a defeated, or, rather, 
a rejected presidential aspirant in 1852. . . . 
We had a weak and tottering administra- 
tion, reeling under the blows laid on from 
every quarter . . . for its gross disregard 
of the platform upon which it came into 
power, and of the just claims of the conser- 
vative portion of the Democratic party. 
. . . The Senator from Illinois, seeing 
this state of things, thought he had a good 
chance to do something handsome for him- 
self, and at the same time to relieve the 
Democratic party from the suspicions which 
had attached to its head. . . . He did 
not wait to be bidden by the administra- 
tion. In looking over the whole ground, he 
thought the readiest way of creating a coun- 
ter-excitement, to save the administration 
and the Democratic party, in the success 
of which he had an interest, would be to 
get up a row on the slave question." 

Against the sharp accusations of Cullom 
should, in fairness, be placed the words of 
Douglas himself. "I have not," he said, 
"brought this question forward as a Northern 
man or as a Southern man. ... I have 
brought it forward as an American Senator, 
representing a State which is true to this 



182 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

principle, and which has approved of my 
action with respect to the Nebraska bill. I 
have brought it forward not as an act of 
justice to the South more than to the North. 
I have presented it especially as an act of 
justice to the people of those Territories, 
and of the States to be formed therefrom, 
now and in all time to come. I have nothing 
to say about Northern rights or Southern 
rights. I know of no such divisions or dis- 
tinctions under the Constitution." 

It is easier today than it was in 1854 to 
accept Douglas's statement, notwithstanding 
that his course in the Kansas-Nebraska 
matter does little credit to his judgment. 
Douglas was to make it clear beyond perad- 
venture, before half a dozen years had 
passed, that he stood immovably for the 
Union as against either sectionalism or 
secession. His political opinions, on the 
other hand, were more the result of impulse 
and notions of expediency than of careful 
or studious reflection. He had doubtless 
convinced himself that the principle of 
popular sovereignty was the correct one to 
apply to slavery, and that the opening of 
new Territories on that basis was an act of 
justice to the Union as a whole; but if he 
imagined that a reopening of the question 
in 1854 would strengthen the Pierce admin- 
istration, or help his own presidential chances 
in 1856, he showed a short-sightedness of 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 183 

which many a lesser poHtician would have 
been ashamed. 

An immediate effect of the appearance 
of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was the revival 
of Northern resistance to the Fugitive Slave 
Act, in regard to which there had been, 
for two years, a declining intensity of feel- 
ing. In March, 1854, a fugitive slave was 
rescued from jail at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
One of the rescuers, a journalist named 
Booth, was arrested, but released under 
habeas corpus process by a justice of the 
Supreme Court of the State, who declared 
the Fugitive Slave law unconstitutional. 
The decision was subsequently affirmed 
by the full bench, but was appealed to the 
Supreme Court of the United States, where 
in 1859 the decision was reversed and the 
opinion of the State court severely criticised. 

On the evening of Wednesday, the 24th 
of May, the day before the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill finally passed the Senate, a fugitive slave 
named Anthony Burns was arrested in 
Boston. The spread of the news threw the 
city into a ferment. On Friday a great 
gathering packed Faneuil Hall, the old 
"cradle of liberty," to listen to inflamma- 
tory speeches by Wendell Phillips and Theo- 
dore Parker. While the meeting was in 
progress word was received that a negro 
mob was attempting to rescue Burns; and 
the audience rushed from the hall to the 



184 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

scene of excitement at Court Square. There 
a small party led by Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, swelled to two thousand by the 
recruits from Faneuil Hall, broke in the door 
of the courthouse; but the building was 
stoutly defended, and the mob was repulsed. 

The mayor called out two companies of 
artillery to support the United States mar- 
shal, and the trial of Burns proceeded on 
Monday under the protection of soldiers 
and police. The case against Burns was 
clear, and he was delivered to his claimant. 
With a guard of United States artillery and 
marines, twenty-two companies of militia, 
and a marshal's posse of one hundred and 
twenty-five deputies, Burns was marched 
to the wharf and placed on a revenue cutter 
bound for Virginia; while windows were 
draped in mourning, and crowds of spectators 
hissed and groaned. 

Reference has been made to Clayton's 
proposed amendment to the Kansas-Neb- 
raska bill, limiting to citizens of the United 
States the right to vote and hold office in 
the Territories. Political opposition to 
foreigners, always popular in America, had 
in 1845, under the name of Native Ameri- 
canism, assumed national importance, four 
members of the House from New Yoik 
and two from Pennsylvania representing 
the new party. Famines in Ireland, fol- 
lowed by the European revolutions of 1848- 



THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE 185 

49, added greatly to the number of foreign- 
ers, many of them Roman CathoHcs, in the 
country. 

In 1852 the agitation broke out afresh 
under the popular name of the "Know- 
Nothing" movement. Secret societies, based 
upon opposition to foreigners and Roman 
Catholics as voters and office-holders, sprang 
up rapidly in Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
New York, Maryland, and Ohio. The most 
important of these societies, the Order of the 
Star-Spangled Banner, had been organized 
in 1850, but its existence did not become 
generally known until 1853. The members, 
when interrogated, professed entire igno- 
rance of the purposes or methods of the 
societies, and most of the organizations 
were so devised as to give the control to 
a few high oflScials. A general convention 
of Know-Nothings, representing societies 
in thirteen States, was held in New York 
City in June, 1854. By secretly endorsing 
Whig or Democratic candidates, the new 
party for a time confounded the old politi- 
cal leaders, and exercised considerable con- 
trol of State and local elections. 

The complete break-up of the Whig party 
in the North, following the passage of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act, gave the new move- 
ment its opportunity. Under the name of 
the American party, the organization in 
1854 carried the State elections in Massa- 



186 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

chusetts and Delaware, and polled a large 
vote in New York and Pennsylvania; while 
many candidates nominally reckoned as 
Republicans or "Anti-Nebraska men" were 
in reality Americans. In 1855 the move- 
ment spread to the South and threatened 
havoc in the Whig party of that section, 
but the comparatively small number of 
foreigners there limited its influence. By 
1856 the party was large enough to hold a 
national convention and nominate candidates 
for President and Vice-President.^ By that 
time, however, the new Republican party 
was in the field, and the story of the campaign 
will be told later. 



CHAPTER X 

THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 

The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law 
on the 30th of May, 1854. Within a month 
settlers from Missouri, believing that the 
passage of the act meant the opening of 
Kansas Territory, at least, to slavery, 
began moving across the border and took 
possession of some of the best lands. Out 
of this migration were presently founded the 
towns of Atchison and Leavenworth, on 
the Missouri River, and Lecompton, fifty 
miles west of the present Kansas City, 
Missouri, on the Kansas River. Few of 
those who went took their slaves with them, 
for slave property was sensitive to change, 
and the ultimate status of slavery in the 
Territory was not yet assured. But freedom 
in Kansas would clearly be a menace to 
slavery in Missouri, especially in view of 
the fact that in the western counties of that 
State the institution was not very profitable; 
and it was desirable, therefore, to take time 
by the forelock. 

A similar migration from the free States, 
especially from Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, 

187 



188 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

set in about the same time. In April the 
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company was 
incorporated, with the object of organizing 
and aiding the migration of free State 
settlers to Kansas. In February, 1855, the 
name was changed to the New England 
Emigrant Aid Company. The leading spirit 
in this enterprise was Eli Thayer, an enthu- 
siastic abolitionist of Worcester. The first 
president of the company was John Carter 
Brown, the foremost merchant of Providence, 
Rhode Island; and among its directors and 
active members were Amos Lawrence, John 
Lowell, and Nathan Durfee, wealthy and 
influential manufacturers of Massachusetts; 
Dr. Samuel G. Howe, a pioneer worker for 
the education of the blind; Edward Everett 
Hale, then a minister at Worcester; Henry 
Wilson, later Vice-President of the United 
States; and Professor Benjamin Silliman of 
Yale College, the geologist. Horace Greeley 
gave the movement efficient aid in the col- 
umns of the New York Tribune, which he 
edited, as did Richard Hildreth, the historian, 
in the Boston Daily Advertiser, 

Contrary to the Missourians, who assumed 
that Kansas was already given over to 
slavery, the Emigrant Aid Company, taking 
popular sovereignty for whatever it might 
prove to be worth, undertook to make 
Kansas a free State by planting in the Terri- 
tory a predominant anti-slavery popula- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 189 

tion. Great care was taken in the selection 
of emigrants, and liberal provision was made 
for their transportation and early main- 
tenance. Farming implements, tools, build- 
ing materials, and a printing press were 
among the facilities furnished; to which 
were presently added, under stress of cir- 
cumstances, Sharpe's rifles. By July, 1855, 
some 1,400 persons had been sent to Kansas, 
at a cost of about $140,000. The town of 
Lawrence, forty miles west of the border, 
became the headquarters of the free State 
men. The representative of the company in 
Kansas was Dr. Charles Robinson, destined 
to play for more than thirty years a promi- 
nent part in the history of the State. 

In October Andrew H. Reeder of Penn- 
sylvania was appointed by President Pierce 
governor of Kansas Territory. Reeder was 
a man of ability and integrity, and although 
friendly to the South and suspicious of the 
Emigrant Aid Company, was determined 
that popular sovereignty should be given 
a fair trial. He was not long in learning the 
view taken of the matter by the proslavery 
element. On the day appointed for the 
election of a territorial delegate to Congress, 
November 29, the proslavery vote in Kansas 
was reinforced by over 1,700 Missourians, 
who rode across the border to participate 
in the election. The free State men, for 
the most part, did not vote. The delegate 



190 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

chosen, J. W. Whitfield, an Indian agent 
and a Tennessean, was promptly admitted 
to a seat in the House of Representatives at 
Washington. 

The first election of members of the terri- 
torial legislature was appointed for March 
30, 1855. As a preliminary to the election, 
a census was taken which showed a total 
population of 8,601, of whom 2,905 were 
entitled to vote. A majority of the voters 
had come from slaveholding States. On 
the morning of election day "an unkempt, 
sun-dried, blatant, picturesque mob of five 
thousand Missourians, with guns upon their 
shoulders, revolvers stuffing their belts, 
bowie-knives protruding from their boot- 
tops, and generous rations of whiskey in 
their wagons,"^ crossed the border, took 
possession of all the polling places save one, 
and furnished more than seventy-five per 
cent of the 6,307 votes returned. 

Four days only were allowed for filing 
protests. The "border ruffians" openly 
threatened death to the signers of such pro- 
tests, and let Reeder know that he would be 
given fifteen minutes in which to decide 
whether or not he would give certificates of 
election to those who had the most votes, 
or be shot. "The scene in the executive 
chamber," writes Mr. Rhodes, "w^hen the 
governor canvassed the returns, was an 

1 Spring, Kansas, 44. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 191 

apt illustration of the result of the Douglas 
doctrine, when put in force by rude people 
in a new country, and when a question had 
to be decided upon which the passions of 
men were excited to an intense degree. The 
thirty-nine members who, on the face of 
the returns, were elected were seated on 
one side of the room, the governor and 
fourteen friends on the other. All were 
armed to the teeth. Reeder's pistols, cocked, 
lay on the table by the side of the papers 
relating to the elections." On technicali- 
ties the governor was able to reject the 
returns from seven districts from which 
protests had been received, and order new 
elections; to those apparently chosen else- 
where he issued certificates.^ 

The legislature met at Pawnee, July 2, 
with a roll of twenty-eight proslavery and 
eleven free State members. Two of the free 
State members resigned, and the other nine 
were shortly unseated. At an adjourned 
session at Shawnee Mission, July 16, a body 
of laws based upon those of Missouri was 
hastily adopted, with the addition of strin- 
gent provisions for the protection of slavery. 
Reeder, his opinions on slavery and popular 
sovereignty revolutionized, encountered the 
bitter and relentless hostihty of the Missouri 
element, who demanded his removal from 
office. President Pierce, who professed 

1 Rhodes, United States, I, 364. 



192 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

"harassing anxiety" at what had taken 
place in Kansas, yielded to the pressure of 
Reeder's enemies, among them Jefferson 
Davis of Mississippi, the Secretary of War, 
and on August 15 the governor was removed. 

The free State party, led by Robinson, 
whose experience in California a few years 
before now stood him in good stead, de- 
nounced the Pawnee legislature as illegal, 
and began arming themselves. The removal 
of Reeder presently showed how the federal 
administration stood. On October 9 a free 
State convention met at Topeka and chose 
Reeder as delegate to Congress. A few days 
before, the proslavery legislature had re- 
elected Whitfield. On the 23d of October a 
free State constitutional convention assem- 
bled at Topeka, and drew up a constitution 
prohibiting slavery. December 15, by a vote 
of 1,731 to 46, the constitution was ratified, 
and in January Robinson was elected gover- 
nor. Kansas thus had two rival govern- 
ments, each of which denounced the other 
as illegal. For the time being, at least, 
might made right: every man went armed, 
and the cocking of a rifle or revolver was 
likely to be the prelude to conversation with 
a stranger. 

When the Thirty-third Congress met, 
December 4, 1854, the breakdown of the 
old party lines at once became apparent. 
There was a safe Democratic majority in 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 193 

the Senate. The House contained 117 
"Anti-Nebraska men," 79 Democrats, and 
37 proslavery Whigs or Know-Nothings, 
all but three of the latter from the South. 
Although the Anti-Nebraska men had a 
majority, many of them were Know-Noth- 
ings , and no candidate for Speaker could 
command their united support. After a 
contest, prolonged to 130 ballots, between 
Richardson, the Democratic candidate, and 
Banks of Massachusetts, who had been 
elected as a Know-Nothing but had later 
identified himself with the new Republican 
movement, it was agreed to elect by a 
plurality, and on February 2 Banks was 
chosen. The long struggle, turning as it did 
on the attitude of parties and leaders to- 
wards the Kansas-Nebraska Act, greatly 
embittered feeling and augured ill for con- 
gressional treatment of the Kansas question. 
Pierce, waiting for the settlement of the 
speakership contest, held back his annual 
message until the last day of the year. 
Serious diplomatic differences with Great 
Britain over the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
and the Crimean War were pending, and he 
was anxious to make public his message and 
the accompanying correspondence. On the 
question of the Kansas troubles he offered 
only a single short paragraph. "In the 
Territory of Kansas," he wrote, "there have 
been acts prejudicial to good order, but as 



194 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

yet none have occurred under circum- 
stances to justify the interposition of the 
Federal Executive." Should there be organ- 
ized resistance to federal or territorial law, 
he would be bound to suppress it. He 
trusted, however, that "the occurrence of 
any such untoward event will be prevented 
by the sound sense of the people of the 
Territory." 

The message, read to the Senate but not 
to the House, was of course written for 
presentation at the beginning of the session. 
By the time it was sent in, however, the two 
factions in Kansas had come near to an 
armed clash. The murder of a free State 
settler by a proslavery squatter, as the out- 
come of a quarrel, had been followed by the 
arrest of one Branson, charged with threat- 
ening the life of one of the accomplices. A 
band of free State men intercepted the 
sheriff, Jones, and his posse on the way to 
Lecompton, the territorial capital, and com- 
pelled the release of Branson. 

Jones hurried off a call for help to Missouri, 
and dispatched a vivid account of the affair 
to Shannon, the newly appointed governor 
of the Territory. In a few days some 
twelve hundred men were encamped along 
the Wakarusa stream, near Lawrence. The 
town had been fortified and six hundred 
men were ready to defend it. Shannon 
appealed for support to the commander of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 195 

the United States troops at Fort Leaven- 
worth, Colonel Sumner, but Sumner refused 
to act without orders from Washington. 
Shannon was finally induced to enter Law- 
rence, and on learning the true state of the 
case prevailed upon the Missourians to 
withdraw. The bloodless "Wakarusa war" 
ended with the victory of the free State 
men. On December 15 came the vote on 
the Topeka constitution, and a month later 
the election of Robinson as governor. 

January 24, in a special message, Pierce 
reviewed at length the course of events in 
Kansas. He charged Reeder with dilatori- 
ness, and with personal misconduct which 
necessitated his removal; upheld the pro- 
slavery legislature and its acts; condemned 
the free State agitation as revolutionary; 
declared that it would be his "imperative 
duty to exert the whole power of the Federal 
Executive to support public order in the 
Territory, to vindicate its laws, whether 
federal or local, against all attempts of 
organized resistance, and so to protect its 
people in the establishment of their own 
institutions, undisturbed by encroachment 
from without." On the other hand, he 
recommended that provision be made by 
Congress, as soon as the population of the 
Teri-itory warranted, for holding a consti- 
tutional convention preparatory to the ad- 
mission of Kansas as a State. 



196 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

If the thinly veiled allusions of the message 
meant anything, they meant that federal 
troops would be used, if necessary, to up- 
hold the proslavery government. The refer- 
ence to "encroachment from without" was 
to the Emigrant Aid Company. The refer- 
ence was made still clearer by a proclama- 
tion of February 11, ordering the cessation 
of unlawful attacks upon the authority of 
the Territory or of the United States therein, 
denouncing the activity of "other persons, 
inhabitants of remote States," who were 
"collecting money, engaging men, and pro- 
viding arms" for illegal use; and threatening 
the employment of military force. To the 
fettered mind of Franklin Pierce the situa- 
tion in Kansas presented no moral issue 
whatever, but only the bare legal question 
w^hether or not the Constitution and laws of 
the United States should be upheld. The 
grim challenge of "War to the knife, and 
the knife to the hilt!" was the answer of 
the free State men to Pierce's legal quibbling, 
and neither Missouri nor the South was 
loth to take it up. 

Three days after the issuance of Pierce's 
proclamation, Reeder opened in the House 
of Representatives a contest for the seat 
occupied by Whitfield as territorial dele- 
gate. The House, in despair at the opposing 
claims of the two factions, appointed a 
special committee — John Sherman of Ohio, 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 197 

Howard of Michigan, and Mordecai Oliver 
of Missouri — to investigate affairs in Kan- 
sas. Oliver, the Democratic member, had 
participated in the fraudulent territorial 
election in March, 1855. 

Before the committee reported, the Kan- 
sas question had taken on a more violent 
and serious aspect. Great efforts had been 
made to induce migration to Kansas from 
the South, and in April a company of 280 
men from South Carolina, Georgia, and 
Alabama, led by Colonel Buford, started 
for the Territory. The men were of the 
ruffian type and well armed, but public 
prayer and a presentation of Bibles were 
sufficient, in some eyes, to give the expedi- 
tion the character of a crusade. In the North 
contributions of money and arms poured in 
upon the Emigrant Aid Company, while 
Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn and 
professors of Yale College joined in a sub- 
scription of Sharpe's rifles, thenceforward 
known as "Beecher's Bibles." 

In April Sheriff Jones visited Lawrence, 
and with the aid of United States troops 
arrested six men. The grand jury, following 
a charge by Lecompte, the chief-justice of 
the Territory, presently indicted Robinson, 
Reeder, and other free State leaders for 
treason, and recommended that two news- 
papers published at Lawrence be suppressed 
and the hotel demolished. On the 11th of 



198 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

May the United States marshal, Donaldson, 
issued a proclamation calling upon all "law- 
abiding" citizens to meet at Lecompton 
and aid him in enforcing the laws. Ten 
days later a body of 750 Missourians and 
territorial militia invaded Lawrence, de- 
stroyed the newspaper offices, threw the 
presses and type into the river, bombarded 
and then burned the hotel, and sacked the 
town. 

This was on the 21st of May. The next 
day Preston B. Brooks, a Representative 
from South Carolina, assaulted Sumner in 
the Senate chamber at Washington. Sum- 
ner, in a two days' speech published under 
the title of "The Crime against Kansas," 
had made a terrific onslaught upon the pro- 
slavery Missourians and their leaders, and 
thrown down a gauntlet of bitter defiance 
to the South. In the course of his invective 
he had gone out of his way to make an 
uncalled-for and scurrilous attack upon 
Senator Butler of South Carolina, who in 
the course of debate had made a dignified 
defense of Atcheson, the Missouri leader. 
Brooks, who was a relative of Butler, entered 
the Senate chamber where Sumner was 
writing at his desk, and beat him on the head 
and shoulders with a heavy cane until 
Sumner, covered with blood and almost 
unconscious, fell to the floor. 
^ A committee appointed to investigate the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 199 

outrage reported that as the assault had been 
committed by a member of the House, it was 
not within the jurisdiction of the Senate, 
although it was "a breach of the privileges" 
of that body. A motion in the House to 
expel Brooks failed from lack of the neces- 
sary two-thirds. Brooks justified himself 
in a defiant speech, resigned his seat, and 
was at once reelected by his constituents. 
Sumner, whose injuries had affected the 
spinal cord, did not resume his place in the 
Senate for three years and a half. The Legis- 
lature of Massachusetts, as an eloquent but 
silent protest, left his seat unfilled until he 
could return to occupy it. 

The sack of Lawrence and the assault 
upon Sumner, coming in such quick succes- 
sion, shook the nation profoundly. To many 
in the North the startling coincidence seemed 
hardly accidental. Was this the meaning of 
popular sovereignty? Were these the means 
by which the cause of slavery was hence- 
forth to be upheld.? Could Franklin Pierce 
still survey the situation in Kansas and 
declare, with his hand upon his heart, that 
the only question involved was that of the 
observance of federal law.? 

A few days passed, and then the country 
heard for the first time the name of John 
BrowTi. A native of Connecticut, growing 
to manhood in the rough life of the Ohio 
frontier. Brown had been, with varymg 



200 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

degrees of failure, a tanner, surveyor, farmer, 
land speculator, and wool merchant. Just 
how or when his mind fastened upon slavery 
as the greatest of all evils is not certain, but 
after 1845 he seems to have come more and 
more to the conviction that slavery must 
be destroyed by force, and that he was in 
some way divinely called to lead the attack. 
A Puritan of the Puritans, the keynote of 
his life was religious and moral zeal; and 
while his fanatical and bloodthirsty acts 
suggest an unsound mind, his plans were 
formed and carried out with coolness and 
intrepidity. 

Brown went to Kansas in the autumn of 
1855. Some of his family had already pre- 
ceded him, and had settled at Osawatomie, 
not far from the Missouri border. Here he 
enrolled himself in the territorial militia and 
was made a captain. The peace which ended 
the "Wakarusa war" was not to his liking, 
and the news of the attack upon Lawrence 
was a final summons to draw the sword. 
Five free State men, as he reckoned it, 
had been wantonly killed thus far, and noth- 
ing less than the sacrifice of an equal number 
of the proslavery party would suffice. 

Scattered along the banks of the Pot- 
awatomie creek were a number of families 
of proslavery squatters, neither better nor 
worse than the average of their class. On 
the night of Saturday, May 24, Brown and 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 201 

seven others, including four of his sons and 
a son-in-law, fell upon them; and five bodies 
found the next day, shot, stabbed, and 
mutilated with cutlasses, testified to the 
terrible character of this new opponent of 
slavery. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, 
by man shall his blood be shed," "without 
the shedding of blood there is no remission": 
these were favorite texts, speaking to him 
the awful judgments of God. The cold- 
blooded killing of five enemies of freedom 
was to John Brown a righteous act; and 
although he later admitted that people were 
not then ready for "such hard blows," he 
felt neither regret nor remorse. 

The free State leaders denounced the 
outrage and repudiated Brown, while the 
border ruffians, instead of being awed, were 
made only the more furious. As a blow 
for freedom in Kansas, the "Potawatomie 
massacre" was a failure. At the call of 
Governor Shannon, United States dragoons 
took the field, compelled Brown to release 
some prisoners he had taken, and in July 
dispersed the free State legislature assem- 
bled at Topeka. For the moment, however. 
Brown himself was not interfered with, but 
Robinson, who was a prisoner at Leaven- 
worth, was threatened with hanging, and 
similar threats were made against some free 
State men confined at Lecompton. 

On the first day of July, 1856, the com- 



202 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

mittee appointed to investigate affairs in 
Kansas made its report to the House. The 
two members of the majority found that 
each election thus far held under the laws 
of the Territory had "been carried by organ- 
ized invasion from the State of Missouri"; 
that the proslavery legislature was an ille- 
gally constituted body, and that its alleged 
laws had been used, as a general thing, for 
unlawful purposes; that the elections of 
Whitfield and Reeder were alike irregular, 
although Reeder received the greater num- 
ber of votes of resident citizens; that a fair 
election could be held only under the pro- 
tection of United States troops, but that the 
Topeka constitution embodied the w411 of 
a majority of the people. On most of these 
points the minority member, Oliver, reported 
exactly the reverse. The House, as little 
able to see its way clearly as it was before, 
unseated Whitfield and then rejected Reed- 
er's claim. Apparently, neither territorial 
government in Kansas was regarded as legal 
by the House. 

A bill to admit Kansas as a State under 
the Topeka constitution was passed by the 
House, only to be rejected by the Senate. 
The House then added a *' rider" to the army 
appropriation bill, virtually forbidding the 
use of troops by the President to enforce 
the acts of the proslavery legislature. A 
deadlock followed, and on August 18 Con- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 203 

gress adjourned without passing the army 
bill. Pierce at once called an extra session, 
and on the 30th, after further wrangling, 
the House receded and, by the narrow major- 
ity of three votes, passed the army bill with- 
out the rider. 

The further history of the Kansas struggle 
is intertwined with the decision of the 
Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, the 
rise of the Republican party and the election 
of 1856, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates; but 
its main points may here be separately traced. 

Following the dispersal of the free State 
legislature at Topeka, in July, 1856, the 
proslavery legislature called a constitutional 
convention at Lecompton. The consti- 
tution framed by that convention in Sep- 
tember, 1857, affirmed the right of property 
in slaves, forbade their emancipation with- 
out the consent of their owners, bound civil 
officers to the enforcement of the Fugitive 
Slave Act, and prohibited the residence of 
free negroes in the State. The vote on the 
constitution was to be "constitution with 
slavery," or "constitution with no slavery." 
If the majority of votes should be for the 
constitution "with no slavery," then the 
article relating to slavery was to be stricken 
out, and slavery should not exist in Kansas. 
The right of property in slaves already in 
the Territory, however, was not to be 
impaired. 



204 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

The free State men pointed out that, even 
if the constitution "with no slavery" were 
adopted, the provisions relating to fugitives 
and free negroes would not be affected, 
for the reason that those provisions were not 
contained in the article relating to slavery. 
They accordingly denounced the action of 
the convention as a fraud, and refused to 
vote. As a result, the constitution "with 
slavery" was ratified, December 21, by a 
vote of 6143 to 589. 

Governor Walker, who had taken office 
in November, urged that the action of the 
free State men was a mistake; and as that 
party, by voting at the regular election, had 
got control of the legislature, the Lecomp- 
ton constitution was again submitted, and 
buried under an adverse majority of more 
than 10,000. With the capture of the regular 
legislature by the free State party, the so- 
called Topeka government under Robinson, 
which had all the while been maintained, 
came to an end. 

In February, 1858, a copy of the Lecomp- 
ton constitution was laid before Congress 
by President Buchanan, and on March 23 
the Senate voted to admit Kansas as a 
State. Douglas, who had long since ceased 
to approve the conduct of the proslavery 
faction, opposed the arguments of President 
Buchanan in favor of the Lecompton con- 
stitution and voted in the negative, de- 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 205 

daring in a speech that whether or not the 
constitution was a good one "is none of my 
business, and none of yours," and that even 
an unexceptionable constitution ought not 
to be forced upon the people. 

Both branches of Congress were Demo- 
cratic, but the House substituted for the 
Senate measure a bill resubmitting the Le- 
compton constitution to popular vote. A 
compromise was finally effected. An amend- 
ment offering to Kansas a large grant of 
public lands, as a substitute for the land 
provisions of the Lecompton constitution, 
was to be submitted to popular vote in the 
Territory. If it was accepted, then Kansas 
was forthwith to be received into the Union 
with the Lecompton constitution. If it 
was rejected, Kansas was to remain a Terri- 
tory until its population was sufficient to 
entitle it to a representative in Congress. 
That number in 1860, the next census year, 
was 127,381, and the population of Kansas 
in that year 107,206. 

August 3 the people of Kansas, by a 
vote of 11,088 to 1788, rejected the bribe 
which Congress had offered them. In July, 
1859, a convention at Wyandotte drew up 
a free State constitution which was rr.tified 
by a large popular vote in October. Under 
that constitution Kansas, January 29, 1861, 
became at last a member of the Union. 

An historian has aptly characterized the 



206 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Kansas struggle as the prelude to the war 
for the Union. The episode stands, so to 
speak, as the watershed dividing the period 
when slavery struggled for equal rights 
with freedom in the Union, from the period 
in which the Union itself struggled to con- 
tinue whole. Every device known to poli- 
tics, from sober argument to assault, murder, 
and open war, was employed to force slavery 
upon the Territory. That the attempt 
failed showed the intensity of moral convic- 
tion in the North on the subject, and the 
determination that no more slave States 
should enter the Union. And the South 
was as determined as the North. The men 
who lived through the months of border 
warfare in Kansas Territory were under no 
illusions regarding their opponents, so far 
as a willingness to resort to force was con- 
cerned. When the South seceded, Kansas, 
at least, knew that the South would fight. 

On the other hand, it would be unfair 
to hold the South as a whole responsible for 
the violent scenes in Kansas. While the 
lower class of whites, such as made up 
Buford's company, were ready for lawless 
adventure and even crime, there were not 
wanting leaders who, though willing enough 
to see Kansas a slave State, were keenly 
aware that the advantage might be won at 
too high a price. The South felt that it had 
in slavery a great principle at stake, for 



THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS 207 

which it was prepared to struggle hard; but 
it was not yet prepared to set law and the 
Constitution at defiance, and rule only by 
might. Nor were all who fought for freedom 
in Kansas unsullied patriots, actuated solely 
by high moral motives. On both sides the 
gross and sordid blended inextricably with 
the noble, the reasoned, and the ideal. 

Why, then, did the struggle ever take 
place, and why was it prolonged .^^ The an- 
swer must be sought, first, in the mutual 
misunderstanding of North and South, and, 
second, in the predominance of the moral 
over the political motive. The Kansas 
contest showed, more clearly than any event 
in American history thus far, how com- 
pletely the two sections of the country had 
grown apart, how irreconcilable were their 
social interests, and how little effort they 
were disposed to make to reach common 
ground. And when satisfaction with the 
existing order was, on the one hand, supple- 
mented by a determination to maintain 
that order at all hazards, and, on the other, 
opposed by the conviction that the order 
was morally wrong, neither laws nor Con- 
stitution could long prevent the conflict. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 

While the Kansas-Nebraska bill was still 
under discussion in Congress, and before the 
lawlessness and open violence which were 
to follow upon its enactment had been fore- 
seen, steps were taken to form a new party. 
The time was ripe for change. The Demo- 
cratic party, proclaiming as ever in its plat- 
forms its adherence to State rights and strict 
construction, had by this time become so 
identified with the radical demands of 
slavery as to make that issue, in the eyes of 
its opponents at least, the only fundamental 
one for which the party stood. With the 
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the 
Anti-Nebraska Democrats could no longer 
stand with their party save by a sacrifice of 
principle; and the Kansas debate, with its 
aftermath, made party affiliation preemi- 
nently a matter of principle. 

The Whig party, on the other hand, was 
hopelessly disintegrated. A remnant of its 
Southern membership held together, and in 
the election of 1860 formed the mainstay of 

208 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 209 

the Constitutional Union party; but the 
majority of its Southern supporters after 
1854 went over to the Democrats. The 
Northern Whigs did, indeed, oppose the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but the 
identification of the party with the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law made it impossible to win 
support for candidates who bore the old 
party name. The Free Soilers, comprising 
in their membership both Democrats and 
Whigs, had passed their zenith as a party. 
Three elements, then, — Whigs, Free Soilers, 
and Anti-Nebraska Democrats, — were ready 
to be combined in a new party if a platform 
could be framed on which all could stand. 

Unlike European countries in which repre- 
sentative government has come to prevail, 
the political life of the United States has 
never favored the fonnation and continu- 
ance of numerous party groups. From the 
beginning of government under the Consti- 
tution, two great parties have, as a rule, 
divided the great majority of the electorate 
between them. Moreover, the fundamental 
difference between these parties has always 
been in regard to the interpretation of the 
Constitution. With the defeat of the Whigs, 
in 1852, no party embodying the broad 
construction theories of Hamilton, Webster, 
and Clay remained to oppose the Demo- 
crats; and this notwithstanding the obvious 
fact that broad construction principles 



210 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

afforded the only constitutional ground on 
which the aggressive demands of slavery 
could be opposed. 

Herein lay the opportunity for a new party. 
If the various forces opposed to the further 
extension of slave territory could be rallied 
to a common standard, with the addition 
of such loose construction tenets as pro- 
tection or internal improvements, the con- 
stitutional principles of the old Federalists 
and Whigs could be revived in modern guise, 
and the party be assured of vigor and long 
life. To be sure, it was asking much of a 
Democrat that he should accept what to 
him were Whig principles; yet it was not 
impossible that the antislavery Democrats, 
w^holly out of sympathy as they were with 
their own party, might, in loving slavery 
less, love loose construction more. 

At a State convention at Jackson, Mich- 
igan, July 6, 1854, the new Republican 
party was launched. The ticket which it 
nominated included Whigs, Free Soilers, and 
Democrats, as befitted the composite mem- 
bership of the new organization; and its 
platform denounced slavery and demanded 
the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law and the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act. A week later similar 
conventions were held in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Wisconsin, the date being chosen as that on 
which the Ordinance of 1787, with its 
prohibition of slavery northwest of the 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 211 

Ohio River, was adopted. The Democrats, 
by taking up the name at once in the con- 
temptuous form of *' Black RepubHcans," 
contributed their share to the success of the 
new movement. 

The Whigs were not yet prepared to give 
up their own organization, and with the 
Know-Nothing party also in the field, the 
fall elections showed much crossing of party 
lines. As a whole, however, the Kansas- 
Nebraska Act was pointedly condemned at 
the polls. Maine chose a Republican Legis- 
lature, which in turn elected a Republican 
governor, no candidate for that office having 
been chosen at the polls. Vermont elected 
an anti-Nebraska ticket, and Massachusetts 
was swept by the Know-No things. New 
York chose a Whig governor by an insig- 
nificant plurality, while three-fourths of 
its representatives in Congress were Anti- 
Nebraska men. In Pennsylvania a com- 
bination of Whigs, Free Soil Democrats, 
and Know-Nothings elected a Whig governor 
on a platform of opposition to the Kansas- 
Nebraska Act. Ohio and Indiana were in 
the Anti-Nebraska column; Illinois forsook 
Douglas to the extent of choosing an Anti- 
Nebraska legislature and five of the nine 
members of Congress; Michigan and Wis- 
consin were Republican. 

Clearly these were notable gains. The 
mysterious strength and activity of the 



212 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Know-Nothings was a disturbing factor, but 
as the candidates of that party were opposed 
to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, their success 
really swelled the volume of condemnation. 
For the moment parties had many forms and 
names, but beneath formal differences was 
union in opposition to slavery extension. 
What the Republicans most needed was a 
leader, but Seward, who perhaps might have 
hastened their triumph, was still a Whig. 

Before the year 1854 was over, the Southern 
demand for more slave territory had another 
pointed illustration. Reference has already 
been made to the political unrest in Cuba, 
and the difficulty which the United States 
encountered in checking filibustering. In 
October, at the suggestion of Marcy, Sec- 
retary of State, the American ministers to 
Great Britain, France, and Spain — James 
Buchanan, John Y. Mason, and Pierre 
Soule — met at Ostend, Belgium, and drew 
up a memorial on the subject of Cuba. The 
memorial urged that Cuba belonged geo- 
graphically to the United States; that the 
peace and security of the Union depended 
upon its acquisition; that an offer of 
$100,000,000 ought to be made for the 
island; and that if Spain refused to sell, 
"then by every law, human and divine, 
we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain 
if we possess the power." Marcy, who was 
not prepared for so extraordinary a pro- 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 213 

posal, treated it coldly, and Soule, the prin- 
cipal author of the manifesto, presently 
resigned. 

The presidential campaign of 1856 saw 
four parties in the field. The Northern 
Whigs hovered between union with the 
Democrats, to whom in a way their accep- 
tance of the Compromise of 1850 drew them, 
and union with the RepubHcans, whose 
constitutional views accorded better with 
Whig history. Already in the West, save 
Ohio, the fusion of Whigs and Republicans 
was practically complete. Most of the 
northern Know-Nothings, also, had joined 
the Republicans, but in the South, thanks 
to Whig recruits, the party was stronger 
than ever. The Democrats, though torn 
within and without by the slavery con- 
troversy, were still formidable, and the 
party was the only one which as yet could 
call itself national. 

The Know-Nothing Convention met at 
Philadelphia February 22. Delegates were 
present from all but four of the thirty-one 
States. After long and violent debate a 
platform prepared by the national council of 
the order was adopted. The platform de- 
clared that "Americans must rule America;" 
demanded that preference be given to native- 
born citizens for all offices, and that a con- 
tinuous residence of twenty-one years be 
required for naturalization; and opposed 



214 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

any union between church and state. On 
the subject of slavery the platform was a 
*' straddle": the right of the citizens of a 
Territory "to regulate their domestic and 
social affairs in their own mode" was asserted, 
at the same time that the administration 
was condemned for repealing the Missouri 
Compromise, and for its "vacillating course" 
on the Kansas-Nebraska question. Ex- 
President Fillmore was nominated for Presi- 
dent by the majority of the delegates. The 
seceding delegates, who had withdrawn from 
the convention in consequence of the dis- 
pute over the platform, nominated Fremont. 
The Democrats, who met at Cincinnati, 
June 2, came near to violent disruption 
through the presence of rival delegations 
from New York, representing the factions 
known as "hards" and "softs," and of 
"regular" and "Benton" delegates from 
Missouri. The leading candidates were 
Pierce, who was supported by the South, 
Buchanan, whose strength was in the North, 
and Douglas, who had a strong popular 
hold in both sections. On the seventeenth 
ballot Buchanan was nominated. The plat- 
form reaffirmed the resolutions of former 
conventions; denounced the "political cru- 
sade" of the Know-Nothings against Cath- 
olics and foreign-born; championed the 
entire congressional program of 1850 and 
1854 in regard to slavery and the Terri- 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 215 

tories; and demanded that "every proper 
effort be made to insure our ascendanev in 
the Gulf of Mexico." 

^ The RepubHcans, who had held a pre- 
liminary convention at Pittsburg on Feb- 
ruary 22, Washington's birthday, met in 
regular convention at Philadelphia on June 
17, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker 
Hill. The delegates represented all the 
Northern States, Virginia, the border States 
of Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky, 
and the Territories. Seward, although now 
a Republican, had not been among the 
founders or earliest supporters of the new 
party, and dechned to be a candidate for 
the presidency. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, 
conspicuous in the Senate for his opposition 
to slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
had been before his conversion too prominent 
a Democrat to make a safe candidate. The 
choice fell upon Fremont, already nominated 
by the seceding Know-Nothings. 

The platform was bold and explicit. It 
denied the right of Congress, or of a terri- 
torial legislature, or of any individuals to 
give legal existence to slavery in any Terri- 
tory; affirmed the right and duty of Con- 
gress to prohibit territorial slavery; arraigned 
the Pierce administration for its flagrant 
violation of constitutional rights in Kansas; 
and demanded the immediate admission of 
Kansas as a free State. The Ostend Mani- 



216 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

festo was denounced as a "highwayman's 
plea." The broad construction principles 
of the party were shown in the demand for 
federal aid in the construction of a railway 
to the Pacific, and in the affirmation of the 
constitutionality of appropriations for inter- 
nal improvements. 

The Whigs mustered delegates from 
twenty-six States at Baltimore, September 
17, nominated Fillmore, the regular Know- 
Nothing candidate, and adopted a platform 
which expressed "the deepest interest and 
anxiety" at "the present disordered condi- 
tion of our national affairs"; proclaimed 
**an absolute necessity for avoiding geo- 
graphical parties" as its "fundamental rule 
of political faith"; and declared that the 
only remedy for the "appalling" situation 
was to support a candidate pledged to neither 
section, but "holding both in a just and 
equal regard." "We are not called upon to 
discuss the subordinate questions of adminis- 
tration in the exercising of the constitutional 
powers of the government. It is enough to 
know that civil war is raging, and that the 
Union is imperilled." With no policy to 
set forth, the W^higs, viewing the political 
confusion which they had helped to create, 
could only wring thei^ hands and shed tears. 

The enthusiasm of the campaign rivaled 
that of the famous "log-cabin and hard 
cider" contest of 1840, but the Republicans 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 217 

could not carry the election. Fremont, dis- 
tinguished as an explorer but with a dubious 
record in the Mexican War, was a poor can- 
didate, especially for a new party. Buchanan, 
although somewhat discredited by his con- 
nection with the Ostend Manifesto, had 
nevertheless the advantage of having been 
out of the country, as minister to England, 
during the Kansas troubles. The popular 
vote stood 1,838,169 for Buchanan, 1,341,204 
for Fremont, and 874,534 for Fillmore. Of 
the 296 electoral votes, Buchanan received 
174, Fremont 114, and Fillmore 8. Although 
Fillmore received votes in every State 
except South Carolina, where the electors 
were still chosen by the legislature, he won 
the entire electoral vote of Maryland only. 
The Republicans carried New England, 
New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and 
Iowa; the remaining States, except Mary- 
land, voted for Buchanan. The new Con- 
gress was Democratic in both branches. 

Pierce, in his last annual message, read 
the North a lesson on the dangers of dis- 
union if aggression on the rights of the South 
did not cease; and elaborated once more 
the familiar constitutional argument against 
federal interference with slavery in the 
Territories or States. With "unmingled 
satisfaction" he announced that, thanks to 
the use of federal troops, there was now a 
*' peaceful condition of things in Kansas." 



218 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Relations with European powers remained 
friendly, but the United States had refused 
assent to so much of the Declaration of 
Paris, made in 1856 by representatives of 
Russia, France, Great Britain, Austria, 
Prussia, Sardinia, and Turkey, as provided 
for the abolition of privateering, unless 
the private property, not contraband, of 
belligerents should also be exempt from 
capture by public armed vessels. In Cen- 
tral America the outlook was less satis- 
factory. In April a mob at Panama had 
destroyed a considerable amount of rail- 
road property, and killed several American 
citizens and pillaged others; the govern- 
ment of New Granada had threatened a 
heavy tax on mail crossing the isthmus; 
and it had been necessary to station naval 
vessels at Panama and Aspinwall to guard 
the railroad which American capital had 
built. 

Buchanan, in his inaugural, stole some 
thunder from the Republicans by urging, 
as a military necessity, the construction of 
a Pacific railway. With regard to slavery he 
spoke as though the question, considered 
as a political issue, was already settled. As, 
in the recent election, "the voice of the 
majority, speaking in the manner prescribed 
by the Constitution, was heard, and instant 
submission followed"; so Congress, with 
"a happy conception", had applied "the 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 219 

simple rule that the will of the majority shall 
govern, to the settlement of the question of 
domestic slavery in the Territories." The 
"difference of opinion" that had arisen 
regarding "the point of time when the people 
of a Territory shall decide this question for 
themselves" was, happily, "a matter of but 
little practical importance"; besides, it was 
a judicial question whose decision belonged 
to the Supreme Court. Before that tribunal 
the issue was even then pending, "and will, 
it is understood, be speedily and finally 
settled"; and in that decision he, in com- 
mon with all good citizens, would cheer- 
fully acquiesce. 

Buchanan had in mind the famous Dred 
Scott case, the decision in which was 
announced March 6, 1857, two days after 
the inauguration. The case had been twice 
argued, in February and December, 1856, 
but the announcement of the decision had 
been delayed, partly because of pressure 
upon the Southern members of the court to 
make the decision more comprehensive than 
was at first, apparently, intended. 

To those who believed that the questions 
involved in the slavery struggle were cap- 
able of judicial settlement, the facts in the 
Dred Scott case were almost ideal. Dred 
Scott was a negro slave, the child of slave 
parents imported from Africa. In 1834 he 
was taken by his owner, Dr. Emerson, an 



220 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

army surgeon, from Missouri to Rock Island, 
Illinois, and thence, in 1836, to Fort Snelling 
on the west side of the Mississippi, within 
the limits of the Louisiana purchase of 1803, 
and north of the Missouri Compromise line 
of 36° 30'. There, with the consent of 
Emerson, Scott married. In 1838 he and 
his family were brought back to Missouri, 
and held there in slavery for the next nine 
years. 

In 1847 Scott brought suit in a lower 
court of Missouri to recover his freedom, 
on the ground of former residence in free 
territory. The court gave judgment in his 
favor, but the Supreme Court of the State 
reversed the decision. In 1853, Scott and 
his family having now become the property 
of one Sandford of New York, he brought 
suit for damages in the United States Cir- 
cuit Court, on the ground that he and his 
family had been wrongfully detained ^ in 
servitude. Sandford pleaded that Scott, being 
a slave of African descent, was not a citizen 
of the United States within the meaning of 
the Constitution, and hence could not sue 
in a federal court. The Circuit Court over- 
ruled the plea, but on other grounds denied 
Scott's claim to freedom. The case, which 
by this time had attracted wide attention, 
was then carried to the Supreme Court of 
the United States. 
^ Chief-Justice Taney, after a learned dis- 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 221 

cussion of law points, came at once to the 
question pf citizenship. "The question," 
he said, "is simply this: can a negro, whose 
ancestors were imported into this country 
and sold as slaves, become a member of the 
political community formed and brought 
into existence by the Constitution of the 
United States, and as such become entitled 
to all the rights, and privileges, and immuni- 
ties guaranteed by that instrument to the 
citizen?" Are negro slaves as a class a 
portion of the "people of the United States?" 
His conclusion was that they were not; 
that they were neither included nor intended 
to be included under the term "citizens" 
in the Constitution, and could, therefore, 
claim none of the rights secured by that 
instrument to the people. 

Taney went on to point out a distinction 
between citizenship of a State and citizen- 
ship of the United States. The former a 
State was free to grant upon any terms it 
pleased, but it could not thereby make its 
own citizen a citizen also of the United States. 
Only such persons or classes of persons as 
were citizens of the several States at the 
time of the adoption of the Federal Consti- 
tution, and were intended to be included in 
its scope, could avail themselves ^ of the 
"privileges and immunities" of citizens in 
other States. The practice of the thirteen 
colonies, the language of the Declaration of 



222 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

Independence, the provisions of the Con- 
stitution, and the legislation of the States, 
as cited by Taney, all showed that it was not 
the intention of the States, when framing the 
Constitution, to reckon negroes as citizens 
either of the States or of the new Union. 

To the historical argument Taney added 
a weighty practical one. If, he urged, the 
States had intended to make the negro a 
citizen of the United States in 1787, and en- 
titled, consequently, to the "privileges and 
immunities" of a citizen in every other State, 
"it would give to persons of the negro race, 
who were recognized as citizens in any one 
State of the Union, the right to enter every 
other State whenever they pleased, singly 
or in companies, without pass or passport 
and without obstruction, to sojourn there as 
long as they pleased, to go where they pleased 
at every hour of the day or night without 
molestation, unless they committed some 
violation of law for which a white man would 
be punished; and it would give them the 
full liberty of speech in public and in pri- 
vate upon all subjects upon which its own 
citizens might speak; to hold public meetings 
upon political affairs, and to keep and carry 
arms wherever they went." 

Here the court should have stopped. 
Having found that Scott was not a citizen 
of Missouri within the meaning of the con- 
stitution, and consequently not entitled to 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 223 

sue in a federal court, it should have re- 
manded the ease to the Circuit Court with 
direction to dismiss it for want of juris- 
diction. What was wanted by the South, 
however, was a judicial opinion on the con- 
stitutionality of the Missouri Compromise; 
and Taney, with a great opportunity not 
to be lost, went on to consider whether the 
facts in the case entitled Scott to freedom. 
In other words, the court, though having 
no jurisdiction, proceeded to say what 
would have been its decision if it had had 
jurisdiction. 

The constitutionality of the Missouri 
Compromise hinged upon the right of prop- 
erty in slaves, and in his affirmation of that 
right Taney was as positive and explicit 
as he had been in the matter of citizenship. 
"The right of property in a slave," he 
declared, "is distinctly and expressly affirmed 
in the Constitution. . . . And no word 
can be found in the Constitution which gives 
Congress a greater power over slave property, 
or which entitles property of that kind to 
less protection than property of any other 
description." Such being the case. Congress 
could not validly prohibit the holding of 
such property in any part of the Louisiana 
purchase, nor did Scott's residence there 
alter his status as a slave. 

From the decision of the court two jus- 
tices, McLean and Curtis, dissented. The 



224 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

opinion of Curtis was the more important. 
Citizens of the United States at the time of 
the adoption of the Constitution could have 
been no others, he urged, than the citizens of 
the United States under the Confederation. 
As under the Confederation the only citizen- 
ship was that which a State conferred, any- 
one who was then a citizen of a State be- 
came, ipso facto, a citizen of the United 
States. And since, as he pointed out, all 
free native-born inhabitants of New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, 
and North Carolina, "though descended 
from African slaves," were citizens and 
even voters; and since the Constitution did 
not of its own motion disfranchise any class 
of persons, it followed that all free native- 
born inhabitants of a State, if citizens 
thereof, are citizens of the United States as 
well. 

Having found that persons of African 
descent might, if free, be citizens, Curtis 
was at liberty, as Taney was not, to exam- 
ine into the facts on which Scott based his 
claim to freedom. By invoking the rules of 
international law, which in this respect were 
part of the common law of Missouri, regard- 
ing the effect of residence in free territory 
upon the status of a slave; by pointing out 
that a contract of marriage, such as Scott, 
with Dr. Emerson's consent, had entered 
into at Fort Snelling, was itself "an effec- 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 225 

tual act of emancipation;" and by showing 
that the Constitution imposes no limitation 
on the power of Congress to make "needful 
rules and regulations" for a Territory, 
Curtis affirmed the freedom of Scott and 
the constitutionality of the Missouri pro- 
hibition. 

On the question of the right of Congress 
to prohibit or regulate slavery in the Terri- 
tories, Curtis was able to cite "eight dis- 
tinct instances, beginning with the first 
Congress and coming down to the year 
1848, in which Congress has excluded slavery 
from the territory of the United States; and 
six distinct instances in which Congress 
organized governments of Territories by 
which slavery was recognized and con- 
tinued, beginning also with the first Congress 
and coming down to the year 1822. These 
acts were severally signed by seven Presi- 
dents of the United States, beginning with 
General Washington and coming regularly 
down as far as John Quincy Adams, thus 
including all who were in public life when the 
Constitution was adopted." And he added 
the pertinent comment that " if the practical 
construction of the Constitution, contem- 
poraneously with its going into effect, by 
men intimately acquainted with its history 
from their personal participation in framing 
and adopting it, and continued by them 
through a long series of acts of the gravest 



226 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

importance, be entitled to weight in the 
judicial mind on a question of construction, 
it would seem to be difficult to resist the 
force of the acts above adverted to." 

It should be borne in mind, in considering 
the first part of Taney's argument and Cur- 
tis' s dissent from it, that prior to the Dred 
Scott decision the nature and limitations 
of citizenship in this country had not been 
judicially defined. So far as definition is 
concerned, the Constitution is silent. What 
Taney did was to draw a fine between the 
citizenship which a State may confer or 
recognize, and that which is alone recognized 
by the Constitution; and to point out that 
the one did not necessarily, and in the case 
of the negro could not, carry with it the 
other. Curtis, on the other hand, virtually 
obliterated such a distinction by holding 
that all free native-born citizens of a State 
were also citizens of the United States. 

No decision of the Supreme Court has 
ever created so much excitement, or been, 
perhaps, so much discussed, as this of Scott 
vs. Sandford. Not only was it clear that 
sectional compromises like that of 1820 were 
without constitutional warrant, but that 
popular sovereignty also could not stand. 
If Congress itself could not prohibit slavery 
in a Territory, neither could a territorial 
legislature do so. The whole case which 
Douglas had labored to construct on the 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 227 

basis of the legislation of 1850 was over- 
thrown, and property in slaves must here- 
after be accorded the same measure of pro- 
tection, and the same equality of right, 
throughout the United States as other kinds 
of property were entitled to. As for the 
negro, his situation was hopeless. The 
highest court in the land had decided that 
he was property, a thing and not a person; 
that the laws of a free State could not give 
him freedom because of any temporary 
sojourn within their jurisdiction; and that 
even emancipation, which any State might 
undoubtedly grant, could not make him a 
citizen within the meaning of the Federal 
Constitution. 

The South, naturally, was elated. Not 
only had its entire contention been conceded 
to it, but the ceaseless pressure of Southern 
opinion had brought the court to its side. 
Doubtless a court, especially in grave con- 
stitutional matters, must in the long run 
be influenced by the trend of enlightened 
public opinion; it cannot pursue its course 
wholly independent of what the majority 
of a community has come to believe. Doubt- 
less, too, Taney and his associates would 
have resented any direct or obvious attempt 
to coerce them. But it was to their lasting 
discredit that, in a cause involving long and 
radical sectional controversy, they ^ should 
have sided with the reactionary minority. 



228 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

and given the weight of their support to a 
cause which the moral judgment, not only 
of an overwhelming majority of the people 
of the United States, but of the civilized 
world as well, had all but repudiated. 

To the Republicans, as to anti-slavery 
men of all political complexions, Taney's 
doctrine concerning the negro was mon- 
strous. To declare that negroes "had no 
rights or privileges but such as those who 
held the power and the government might 
choose to grant them," was to negative all 
that the antislavery agitation had ever done. 
For the "assumption of authority" which 
had led the court, in its dictum regarding 
the Missouri Compromise, to violate a 
primary rule of judicial action and decide a 
question which was not properly before it, 
there was also prompt and merited condem- 
nation. With practical unanimity the anti- 
slavery and Republican sentiment of the 
country repudiated the decision, and de- 
clared that it could not stand. 

Repudiated or not, however, the opinion 
of Taney was the opinion of the court, and 
as such was for the time being a part of the 
law of the land. The dissenting views of 
Curtis, however much applauded as the true 
constitutional interpretation, were without 
legal force or effect. The doctrine of the 
Dred Scott case remained a part of the law 
of the land until the adoption of the Thir- 



THE NEW REPUBLICANISM 229 
teenth and Fourteenth Amendments m 

1865 and 1868 abolished slaverraTdseked 
the question of citizenship by ordaining, in 
essential agreement with Curtis, that "all 
persons born or naturalized in the United 
btates. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, 
are citizens of the United States and of the 
btate wherein they reside." 



CHAPTER XII 

UNION OR DISUNION 

The Dred Scott decision marks a cul- 
minating point in the history of the slavery 
controversy. Between the claim of the 
South to full recognition of the constitutional 
right to hold slaves anywhere, and the de- 
mand of the North for the exclusion of slav- 
ery from Territories and future States, there 
was, apparently, no ground for further 
compromise. The South had fought a long 
and bitter fight, and had won. After the 
court had rendered its decision, hardly a 
vestige of the antislavery contention re- 
mained. The practical question now was. 
Would the North submit.^ Would the 
antislavery forces abandon their opposition, 
now that the highest judicial tribunal had 
spoken, and be content with a Union one- 
half of which was free and the other half 
slave? The reopening of the slave trade 
had begun to be discussed; would the South 
push its advantage by demanding this 
concession also.^^ 

Buchanan was not a man to meet a crisis. 

230 



UNION OR DISUNION 231 

He had, indeed, been long in public life, first 
as Representative from Pennsylvania in Con- 
gress, then as Senator, later as Secretary of 
State under Polk, and finally as minister to 
Great Britain. In all of these positions he 
had been eminently respectable, industrious, 
painstaking, and courteous, but without 
the smallest evidence of greatness. He had 
consistently opposed both abolition and 
antislavery, and in the matter of political 
faith was of the straitest sect of strict con- 
struction Pharisees. In his first annual 
message, when Kansas was seething over 
the attempt to force upon it the Lecompton 
constitution, he could conclude a long and 
biassed account of events in the Territory 
with the remark: "Kansas has for some 
years occupied too much of the public 
attention. It is high time this should be 
directed to far more important objects." 

Neither Dred Scott nor Kansas, however, 
could long be kept out of public discussion. 
The term of Douglas as Senator from 
Illinois expired in 1859, and the Legislature 
to be elected in the fall of 1858 would choose 
his successor. Douglas, of course, was a 
candidate for reelection, and many Republi- 
cans, believing that his doctrine of popular 
sovereignty had insured freedom in Kansas, 
favored his candidacy. It was felt to be by 
no means certain that, if reelected, he would 
not, through some new alignment of parties. 



232 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

be the successful nominee for President in 
1860. 

June 16, however, the Republicans in 
Illinois nominated Abraham Lincoln for 
Senator. Lincoln was forty -nine years old. 
Born in Kentucky, reared in poverty and 
hardship on the frontier, self-educated, 
ungainly in appearance, he had worked his 
way to the front rank at the Illinois bar, had 
been four times elected a member of the 
legislature, had served a term as member 
of Congress, and in 1854 had been an unsuc- 
cessful aspirant for the United States Senate. 
Sprung from the common people, destined 
to fill in the popular mind a place second 
only to that of Washington, his strength 
lay in a mind disciplined by careful reading, 
reflection, and mathematical study, in sim- 
plicity and purity of life, in clearness of 
moral vision, and in a never-failing sense of 
humor. 

In a speech before the convention accepting 
the nomination, Lincoln stated the case, as 
he understood it, with startKng precision. 
"'A house divided against itself cannot 
stand.' I believe this government cannot 
endure permanently half slave and half 
free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
solved — I do not expect the house to fall — 
but I do expect it will cease to be divided. 
It will become all one thing or all the other." 
Friends to whom he submitted the speech 



UNION OR DISUNION 233 

had objected to its radicalism, but Lincoln 
replied that "this thing has been retarded 
long enough," and "the time has come 
when these sentiments should be uttered." 

The campaign opened in July. Douglas, 
who knew and fully appreciated his opponent, 
did not share the opinion of his Democratic 
followers that victory would be easily won. 
After a few preliminary speeches a series of 
seven joint debates was arranged. Douglas 
had the advantage of wide popular sup- 
port, but his open hostility to the Pierce and 
Buchanan administrations had turned federal 
oflSce-holders against him, and threatened to 
disrupt the Democratic party in the State. 
Lincoln, on the other hand, had to meet at 
first the opposition of eastern Republicans, 
including Greeley and the New York Tribune. 
Douglas was an orator and admittedly the 
best debater in public Hfe. Lincoln, though 
the best jury lawyer in Illinois, was awkward 
and ill at ease until he got well into his sub- 
ject; then the qualities which had earned for 
him the name of "Honest Abe" shone out. 

At the opening of the debate Douglas 
charged Lincoln with being an abolitionist, 
and declared that, for himself, he did not 
believe "that the Almighty ever intended 
the negro to be the equal of the white man." 
Lincoln, in reply, denied that he had any 
purpose of introducing political and social 
equality between the races, beHeving that 



2S4 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

there was "a physical difference between 
the two which . . . will probably forever 
forbid their living together upon the footing 
of perfect equality." "But," he added, "I 
hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is 
no reason in the world why the negro is not 
entitled to all the natural rights enum- 
erated in the Declaration of Independence — 
the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." The natural bonds that held 
the Union together were many, but slavery 
had always been "an apple of discord, and 
an element of division in the house." 

A week later each candidate searchingly 
questioned the other. Lincoln declared that 
lie was not committed to the abolition of 
the domestic slave trade or of slavery in the 
District of Columbia, nor to the uncondi- 
tional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law; but 
that he did believe that Congress could and 
should exclude slavery from the Terri- 
tories. To Douglas, in reply, he propounded 
the direct question as to whether the people 
of a Territory could, "in any lawful way, 
against the wish of any citizen of the United 
States, exclude slavery from its lunits prior 
to the formation of a State constitution." 
Douglas, whose whole argument involved 
the attempt to harmonize popular sover- 
eignty with the Dred Scott decision, declared 
that the future decision of the Supreme Court 
on the abstract question was immaterial. 



UNION OR DISUNION 235 

and that "the right of the people to make a 
slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect 
and complete under the Nebraska bill." 
In other words, since the court had not 
passed judgment directly upon the Kansas- 
Nebraska Act, the slavery doctrine of that 
law was still intact. 

One further extract must suffice. The 
real issue, declared Lincoln, is not that of 
constitutional theory or legal interpretation, 
but the right or wrong of slavery. "It 
is the eternal struggle between these two 
principles — right and wrong — throughout 
the world. They are the two principles 
which have stood face to face from the 
beginning of time, and will ever continue 
to struggle. The one is the common right 
of humanity, and the other the divine right 
of kings. . . . It is the same spirit that 
says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, 
and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it 
comes, whether from the mouth of a king 
who seeks to bestride the people of his own 
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or 
from one race of men as an apology for en- 
slaving another, it is the same tyrannical 
principle." 

The senatorial campaign, lasting for more 
than three months, was the most exciting 
that Illinois had ever known. In the East, 
where Lincoln was almost unknown, popular 
interest centered mainly in Douglas, but 



236 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

the publication of Lincoln's speeches, and 
presently of the whole debate, stamped 
Lincoln as one of the foremost exponents of 
RepubUcan doctrine, though he had yet 
to draw the more conservative members of 
the party up to his level. By a majority of 
eight Douglas carried the legislature, but 
the Republicans elected their State ticket. 
Buchanan and his friends, on the other 
hand, were anything but pleased at a result 
which apparently assured to Douglas the 
Democratic nomination for President in 
1860. The administrative newspaper organ 
at Washington had denounced both Lincoln 
and Douglas as "a pair of depraved, blus- 
tering, mischievous, low-down demagogues." 
Elsewhere than in Illinois the adminis- 
tration met reverses. The October elec- 
tions of 1858 in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, 
and Iowa went against the administration. 
Towards the end of the month Seward, now 
generally regarded as the leader of the Re- 
publicans, made a great speech at Rochester, 
New York, denouncing the Democrats for 
their identification with slavery, declaring 
that slavery and freedom were not only 
incongruous but incompatible, and that the 
two systems, continually coming into closer 
contact, were resulting in colHsion. "Shall 
I tell you what this collision means? They 
who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, 
the work of interested or fanatical agitators. 



UNION OR DISUNION 237 

and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case 
altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict 
between opposing and enduring forces, and 
it means that the United States must and 
will, sooner or later, become either entirely 
a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free- 
labor nation." 

^ The thought was Lincoln's, but its enun- 
ciation by Seward, whether he had reached 
his conclusion independently or not, gave it 
the weight of a statesman. In November, 
New England, New York, and the States of 
the Northwest repudiated the administra- 
tion tickets, as did Pennsylvania, although 
in the latter case it was the tariff reduction 
and panic of 1857, rather than slavery and 
Kansas, that caused the defeat. 

As if to emphasize the "irrepressible con- 
flict," the North continued to be stirred by 
the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. 
In September, 1858, a slave-hunter named 
Jennings, searching for runaway slaves at 
Oberlin, Ohio, decoyed a negro from the 
town, seized him, and carried him to the 
near-by village of Wellington, preparatory 
to bringing him before a federal commis- 
sioner for trial. A crowd of Oberlin men 
rescued the negro and aided him to escape. 
Thirty-seven persons, including a professor 
and several students of Oberlin College, were 
indicted and tried at Cleveland. Two were 
convicted, fined and imprisoned; the others, 



238 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

who had been released on recognizances, 
voluntarily went to jail pending trial. The 
administration at Washington took a lively 
interest in the case, but so strong was the 
public s^nnpathy for the accused, and so 
serious the political consequences that were 
likely to follow if the matter was pressed, 
that the remaining cases were presently 
dropped and the prisoners released. 

In his annual message of December, 1858, 
Buchanan was able to inform Congress of 
the settlement of a serious difficulty in Utah. 
The Territory of Utah had been occupied by 
Mormons, whose industry and skill had 
gone far to turn the desert about Salt Lake 
into a garden. From the first, however, 
there was friction with the "Gentiles," 
or non-Mormons, attended with murders 
and outrages. Under the leadership of 
Brigham Young, the head of the Mormon 
church and governor of the Territory, a 
despotism was established which set at 
defiance the authority of the United States, 
and in 1857 the federal officers in Utah were 
compelled, for personal safety, to withdraw. 
The Mormons were well armed, supplied 
with provisions for three years, and ready 
if necessary. Young declared, to "take to 
the mountains and bid defiance to all powers 
of the government." 

Buchanan removed Young, appointed a 
new governor, Cumming, and other federal 



UNION OR DISUNION 239 

officials, and ordered a detachment of troops 
to accompany them to Utah. In Septem- 
ber, 1857, Young issued a proclamation 
establishing martial law, and vacated and 
burned Fort Bridger and Fort Supply. 
On October 4 the Mormons captured and 
burned three supply trains and carried ofif 
several hundred animals. The troops spent 
a hard winter at Fort Bridger, and prepara- 
tions were made for the dispatch of a large 
additional force in the spring. In April, 
hoping to avoid open war, two commis- 
sioners were sent to Utah, and with the aid 
of Gumming and the troops succeeded in 
restoring order. 

Buchanan still longed for Cuba. His 
message of 1858 declared the island to be 
"a constant source of injury and annoyance 
to the American people." With the slavery 
question a seething ferment on every hand, 
he could nevertheless solemnly urge, as a 
further reason for acquisition, that Cuba 
"is the only spot in the civilized world 
where the African slave trade is tolerated," 
and that "as long as this market shall re- 
main open there can be no hope for the civil- 
ization of benighted Africa." The suggestion 
of an appropriation for the purchase of the 
island, however, was vigorously resented by 
Spain, and the matter was presently dropped. 

In the world of finance and business, on 
the other hand, the outlook at the close of 



240 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

1858 was favorable. The country ^ was 
recovering from the effects of the panic of 

1857. The falhng off of imports, however, 
had brought about a corresponding reduc- 
tion of revenue, and the debt had been in- 
creased by an issue, in December, 1857, of 
$20,000,000 in treasury notes, and in June, 

1858, of a loan of the same amount. Bu- 
chanan recommended a revision of the tariff, 
and urged the advantage of specific duties 
in place of the existing system. 

In October, 1859, the country was startled 
by the news of the John Brown raid. Brown 
had returned from Kansas in January, 1858, 
and on February 22, at the house of Gerritt 
Smith at Peterboro', New York, had un- 
folded to Smith and Frank Sanborn his 
plan to attack slavery by force. He pro- 
posed to establish himself in the Virginia 
mountains, and with the aid of slaves who 
would flock to him, and of twelve recruits 
who were drilling in Iowa, to organize a 
government, levy war, and eventually, 
through amendment of the Constitution, 
abolish slavery. Orders had already been 
placed for arms, and with the assurance of 
eight hundred dollars he was prepared to 
begin operations in May. 

Sanborn laid the matter before Theodore 
Parker and other Boston friends, and a 
fund of one thousand dollars was raised. 
The threatened defection of a follower in 



UNION OR DISUNION 241 

Iowa, however, delayed the execution of 
the plan, and it was not resumed until the 
spring of 1859. Then, with a fund now 
increased to about four thousand dollars. 
Brown rented two farmhouses about four 
miles from the United States arsenal at 
Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Here he cau- 
tiously collected arms and ammunition, 
and a force of thirteen whites and five 
negroes. 

On the night of Sunday, October 16, the 
attack was made. The arsenal, armory, 
and rifle works, none of which were guarded 
by troops, were seized and occupied; the 
mail train to Baltimore was stopped for 
several hours, and a colored porter shot; 
and several neighboring slaveholders, among 
them a descendant of Washington, were 
arrested and brought in as prisoners. At 
daybreak, when the citizens of the town 
discovered the situation, an attack upon the 
invaders began, the militia were called out, 
and the telegraph carried the news far and 
wide. On Monday evening a company of 
marines, under command of Col. Robert E. 
Lee, reached Harper's Ferry. Out of regard 
to the safety of the prisoners held by Brown, 
an attack upon the engine house, in which 
the remnant of Brown's forces had taken 
refuge, was delayed until morning; then 
the door was broken in, and the defenders 
quickly overpowered. 

Shaken as was Virginia and the South 



242 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

by this extraordinary raid, Brown's conduct 
awakened for the moment, among the 
better element in Virginia, admiration and 
respect. Governor Wise, who hastened 
to Harper's Ferry and had a conversation 
with Brown, was greatly impressed by the 
noble bearing of the prisoner. Brown talked 
freely, only refusing to implicate his sup- 
porters. In the North, where only a few 
months before the sober arguments of 
Lincoln had been deprecated as too radical, 
the raid, though not approved, was explained 
and excused. Those who had directly 
aided Brown, however, with a few excep- 
tions, were in a panic. Sanborn and others 
destroyed their papers and fled to Canada; 
Gerritt Smith, though guarded by his 
townspeople and secure from harm, became 

insane. 

October 25, one week after the raid, Brown 
was indicted by the grand jury at Charles- 
town for conspiracy, treason, and murder. 
The trial began the next day, notwithstanding 
that Brown was still suffering from his 
wounds. The verdict, rendered on the 31st, 
sustained the indictment. On Friday, the 
2d of December, with an imposing array of 
militia, cavalry, artillery, scouts, and rangers, 
he was publicly hanged. 

Various, indeed, have been the judgments 
passed upon John Brown. To those which 
have hailed him as a hero, a martyr, the 
savior of the Union, are to be added those 



UNION OR DISUNION 243 

which have denounced him as a crazy 
fanatic, a traitor, and a murderer. Yet 
It IS clear that, in the history of the rrreat 
s avery controversy, he stands practically 
alone. He did not precipitate the Civil 
VVar, nor contribute greatly to the abolition 
ot slavery His was, rather, a voice crying 
in the wilderness, calling the men of the 
nation to repent, and willing to be over- 
borne m fighting what he believed to be a 
national sm It was his spirit, rather than 
his deeds, that long made his name an in- 
spiration to the North. 

The elections of 1858 had materially 
changed the party complexion of the new 
Congress which met in December, 1859. 
1 he Democrats still retained a large majority 
m the Senate, but in the House a Democratic 
majority of 25 in the previous Congress was 
changed to a EepubKcan plurality of 23, 
with 86 members classed as regular Demo- 
crats, 13 as Anti-Lecompton Democrats, 
and 22 as Know-Nothings. Not until 
February 1, 1860, was a Speaker chosen, 
the choice then falling upon a Republican. 
The South, with the John Brown raid fresh 
in mind, was in an angry and threatening 
mood, and there was heated discussion of a 
book by H. R. Helper, entitled "The Im- 
pending Crisis of the South," first published 
in 1857 and later widely circulated in a 
cheap edition. The theme of the book was 
that slavery was an injury to Southern in- 



244 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

dustry and the Southern people, and ought 
to be abolished. 

A committee of the House spent three 
months in investigating the charge that 
the administration had offered bribes to 
members of Congress and newspaper editors 
to vote for the bill to admit Kansas under 
the Lecompton constitution. Buchanan 
entered a vigorous protest against the inves- 
tigation, declaring that there was no public 
act of his life "which will not bear the strict- 
est scrutiny." The Republican majority 
of the committee reported that the charges 
had been sustained, while the Democratic 
minority upheld the President. A resolution 
censuring the President and the Secretary 
of the Navy for partisan treatment of bids 
and contracts was passed, against which 
Buchanan again protested. 

The Kansas question reappeared in the 
form of an application for the admission of 
the State under the Wyandotte constitu- 
tion. The House passed a bill for admission, 
but the Senate rejected it. In the previous 
Congress a bill giving to heads of families 
the right to purchase public lands, to the 
amount of 160 acres, at the minimum price 
of $1.25 per acre, had been made a party 
question; and the bill, after passing the 
House, had been left without action by the 
Senate. This "Homestead Bill" was now 
revived in the form of a substitute offering 



UNION OR DISUNION 245 

lands at twenty-five cents an acre to actual 
settlers. Buchanan vetoed it on the ground 
that it interfered with the public land 
system, was unjust to the older States and 
to settlers themselves, and would unduly 
diminish the revenue. 

All matters of legislation, however, were 
dwarfed into insignificance by the over- 
shadowing importance of the presidential 
election. The Democrats met in conven- 
tion at Charleston, April 23, 1860. Majority 
and minority sets of resolutions, embodying 
respectively the radical and conservative 
views of the party, were presented. On the 
30th the minority resolutions, reaffirming 
the platform of 1856, were adopted. Many 
Southern delegates at once withdrew. After 
balloting for fifty-seven times for President, 
the convention adjourned to meet at Balti- 
more on June 18. The seceding delegates 
met and organized, and adjourned to meet 
at Richmond on June 11. The regular 
convention, reassembling at Richmond, at 
once nominated Douglas. A further seces- 
sion took place, and the seceders, joined by 
those who had withdrawn at Charleston, 
nominated John C. Breckinridge of Ken- 
tucky. The platform of the Breckinridge 
delegates included an uncompromising asser- 
tion of the rights of slavery in the Territories. 

On May 9 a convention of delegates styhng 
themselves the Constitutional Union party 



246 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

met at Baltimore, adopted a platform calling 
for "the Constitution of the country, the 
union of the States, and the enforcement of 
the laws," and nominated John Bell of 
Tennessee for President. 

The Republicans met at Chicago May 16. 
The leading candidate was Seward, but he 
had to reckon with the bitter opposition of 
Greeley and the New York Tribune, the 
latter now the leading organ of the party; 
and his radical views on slavery were by 
no means generally acceptable. After three 
ballots, Lincoln was unanimously nominated. 
The platform, adopted before the nomina- 
tions were made, planted the Republicans 
squarely on antislavery ground in declaring 
*'that the normal condition of all the terri- 
tory of the United States is that of freedom," 
and calling for the immediate admission of 
Kansas under the Wyandotte constitution; 
but it shrewdly appealed to progressive 
and broad construction sentiment on other 
grounds also, favoring a protective tariff, 
the passage of the Homestead bill as framed 
by the House, river and harbor improve- 
ments, and a Pacific railway. 

The campaign was as ominous as it was 
exciting. The Republicans were confident 
of success, while from the South came open 
threats of withdrawing from the Union if 
Lincoln were elected. The only hope of 
avoiding a rupture lay, apparently, in the 



UNION OR DISUNION 247 

division among the Democrats; for while 
Breckinridge, the radical Southern candidate, 
stood for secession, Douglas, the regular 
Democratic nominee, stood for union. 

The vote was instructive. In a total of 
303 electoral votes, Lincoln had 180, Breck- 
inridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas n. The 
popular vote stood 1,866,452 for Lincoln, 
1,376,957 for Douglas, 849,781 for Breckin- 
ridge, and 588,879 for Bell. Lincoln's popular 
vote was a noticeable minority of the total, 
but in the South, where, with the exception 
of Virginia and the border States, he received 
no votes at all, the combined popular vote of 
Douglas and Bell, both Union candidates, 
exceeded by more than 100,000 the vote for 
Breckinridge. 

But the temper of the South had been 
sorely tried, and the South, whether right 
or wrong, was not afraid. The desirability 
of slavery was, indeed, still a debatable 
question; but what the South demanded 
was the right to live its own life in its own 
way, under such social institutions as were 
satisfactory to itself. And since, with a 
Republican administration soon to be inau- 
gurated, there seemed small likelihood that 
the South would long be able to defend it- 
self in the Union, it sought, with mingled 
anger and regret, political and social inde- 
pendence out of the Union. 

The only State in which presidential elec- 



248 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

tors were still chosen by the Legislature was 
South Carolina. The legislature met for 
that purpose November 4. As soon as the 
result of the election was known, every 
federal office-holder in the State resigned. 
On the 12th an act was passed summoning 
a convention to consider the question of 
withdrawing from the Union, and the next 
day a governor was chosen who at once 
formed a cabinet as though South Carolina 
were an independent State. The conven- 
tion met on December 17, and on the 20th 
issued the famous Ordinance of Secession. 
The next day the representatives of the 
State in Congress withdrew from the House 
of Representatives. 

Buchanan was advised by his Attorney- 
General, Black, that he had no constitu- 
tional power to use force in South Carolina 
unless there was federal property to defend 
or federal officials to uphold; and he could 
do no more, in his annual message in Decem- 
ber, than declare that while no State might 
constitutionally^ secede, he was helpless if 
it did. Meantime conventions were being 
called in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mis- 
sissippi, and Louisiana. On December 12 
Black succeeded Cass as Secretary of State, 
and a new Attorney-General, Edwin M. 
Stanton, with far more vigorous views of 
the President's powers, entered the cabinet. 
Two weeks later three commissioners from 



UNION OR DISUNION 249 

demaL^X"? ^^^vT'^ ^* Washington to 
demand the immediate removal of federal 
troops from the forts in Charleston harbor 

liiere were not wanting many who still 
hoped for peaceable adjustment.^ Innumer 

f„ rnr'""''™'''?-!!"^'^'"^'*'"^ ^«^<^ presented 
m Congress. The one which for a time 

seemed most likely to succeed, known as 

n,,mfr /° ''"/'''"P''^'"'^^' proposed a 
nil^f 1? ''^endments to the Constitution, 
practically conceding all that the South had 
ever claimed. Even Seward was willing to 
vote tor an irrepealable amendment protect- 
ing slavery m the States in which it already 
existed. _ In February a peace congress, 
comprising delegates from twenty-one States 
and presided over by ex-President Tyler 
met at Washington and recommended elabo- 
rate amendments; while Congress itself, 
March 2, voted to submit an amendment 
forever restraining that body from inter- 
fering with slavery in any State. 

But the movement for secession went 
forward systematically. On January 9 Miss- 
issippi seceded, followed by Florida on 
January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia 
on January 19, and Louisiana on Januarv 
26. On the 8th of February a congress of 
representatives from the five seceded States 
met at Montgomery, Alabama, and adopted 
a provisional constitution, replaced in March 
by the permanent constitution of the Con- 



250 FROM JEFFERSON TO LINCOLN 

federate States of America. The President 
of the new government was Jefferson Davis, 
lately Senator from Mississippi. As fast 
as the States announced their withdrawal 
from the Union, they seized the federal 
property within their limits, the total 
amount taken over being estimated at $30, 
000,000. With the secession of Texas, in 
February, about half of the regular army 
of the United States was surrendered to 
the authorities of the State. 

Lincoln went to Washington ten days 
before his inauguration, escaping a plot to 
assassinate him as he passed through Balti- 
more, and remained quietly at a hotel until 
Buchanan's term had ended. The burden 
of his conversations with those who called 
upon him was the necessity of saving the 
Union, and the hope that the final appeal to 
arms might be avoided. With events pro- 
gressing as they were, perhaps he himself 
did not yet know what his policy would be, 
but he meant to appease the South and 
prevent disruption if such were possible. 
On the 4th of March, with all the troops that 
General Scott could muster guarding Penn- 
sylvania Avenue, he rode to the capitol, 
took the oath of office, read his inaugural 
address, and returned to the White House 
to take up, sadly but courageously, the 
supreme task of saving the Union. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The period covered by this volume is dealt with at length 
in three comprehensive histories: H. von Hoist, Constitu- 
tional and Political History of the United States (8 vols., new 
ed. 1899) ; J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United 
States (7 vols., 1883-1910), to 1850; and J. Schouler, History 
of the United States (6 vols., 1894-99). To these are to be 
added the first two volumes of J. F. Rhodes, History of the 
United States from the Campromise of 1850 (7 vols., 1893- 
1906). Six of the volumes in the American Nation, a co- 
operative work edited by A. B. Hart, form practically a 
continuous narrative: F. J. Turner, Rise of the New West; 
W. MacDonald, JacJcsonian Democracy; W. P. Garrison, 
Westward Extension; A. B. Hart, Slavery and Abolition;, T. C. 
Smith, Parties and Slavery; F. E. Chadwick, Causes of the 
Civil War. Nicolay and Hay's elaborate Abraham Lincoln 
(10 vols., 1890) is a comprehensive history as well as a 
biography. 

The American Statesmen series, American Crisis Biographies, 
and Great Commanders series are important but very uneven 
collections. To these should be added W. Birney, James G. 
Birney and his Times (1890); O. G. Villard, John Brown 
(1910); G. T. Curtis, Daniel Webster (2 vols., 1870) and 
James Buchanan (2 vols., 1883) ; D. Mallory, Life and Speeches 
of Henry Clay (2 vols., 1843); C. Colton, Life and Times of 
Henry Clay (2 vols., 1846); A. Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas 
(1908); F. J. and W. P. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison 
(4 vols., 1885-89); G. W. Julian, Joshua R. Giddings (1892); 
T. D. Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne (1909); H. Bruce, Life of Gen- 
eral Houston (1891); J. S. Bassett, Andretv Jackson (2 vols., 
1911); H. A. Garland, John Randolph (2 vols., 1850); F. W. 
Blackmar, Charles Robinson (1902); F. Bancroft, Williatn 
H. Seward, (2 vols., 1900) ; W. W. Story, Joseph Story (2 vols., 
1851); E. L. Pierce, Charles Sumner (4 vols., 1S77-9;?); S. 
Tyler, Roger B. Taney (1872); P. A. Stovall, Robert Toombs 

251 



252 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

(1892); A. G. Riddle, Benjamin F. Wade (1886); T. W. 
Barnes, Thurlow Weed (1884); J. W. DuBose, William L. 
Yancey (1892). 

Of the collected writings of American statesmen the most 
important are: James Buchanan, Works, edited by J. B. 
Moore (12 vols., 1908-11); John C. Calhoun, Works (6 vols., 
1853-55) and Correspondence (Report of Amer. Historical 
Assoc, 1899, vol. II); Henry Clay, Works (6 vols., 1863); 
Millard Fillmore Papers, edited by F. H. Severance (Publica- 
tions of Buffalo Hist. Society, vols. X, XI); James Monroe, 
Writings, edited by S. M. Hamilton (7 vols., 1898-1903); 
W. H. Seward, Works, edited by G. E. Baker (5 vols., 1853- 
84); Daniel Webster, Works (6 vols., 1851). 

The literature of autobiography and reminiscence is very 
extensive, including among its more significant items John 
Quincy Adams's Memoirs (12 vols., 1874-77), T. H. Benton's 
ThiHy Years View (2 vols., 1854-56), Amos Kendall's 
Autobiogra'phy (1872), James K. Polk's Diary (4 vols., 1910), 
N. Sargent's Public Men and Events (2 vols., 1875), and 
Winfield Scott's Memoirs (2 vols., 1864). 

Important special aspects of the period are treated in E. 
Stanwood, History of the Presidency (1898); H. J. Ford, Rise 
and Growth of American Politics (1898); D. R. Dewey, 
Financial History of the United States (3d ed., 1907) ; F. W 
Taussig, Tariff History of the United States (5th ed., 1910) 
E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the United States (1908) 
J. W. Foster, A Century of American Diplomacy (1900) 
D. F. Houston, Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina 
(1896); W. E. B. DuBois, Suppression of the African Slave 
Trade (1896). 

The following collections of documents are useful: J. D. 
Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents (10 vols., 
1896-99); A. Johnston and J. A. Woodburn, American Ora- 
tions (4 vols., 1896-97); W. MacDonald, Select Documents, 
1776-1861 (1898). Of the Lincohi-Douglas debates there 
are several editions. 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 91 

Abolition petitions, 73-75; early 

societies, 65 
Abolitionists, election of 1844, 98 
Adams, J. Q., on internal improve- 
ments, 32; acquisition of Florida, 
34; election of 1828, 42; as 
political leader, 43; abolition 
petitions, 73; on Texas annexa- 
tion, 90 
Albany regency, 44 
Alton, III., mob, 71 
American Antislavery Society, 69 
American Colonization Society, 66 
American party, 185, 186 {See 

Jblections) 
Antimasons, 45, 62 [See Elections) 
Anti-Nebraska men, 186 {See 
Elections) 

Appeal of the Independent Demo- 
crats, 173 
Astoria, 94 
Atchison, Ks,, 187 

Bancroft, George, 81, 103, 107 
Bank of United States, first, 27, 28; 

second, 47-53 
Banks, N. P., 193 
Barnburners, 122 
Bear Flag Republic, 114, 115 
Bell, John, 246 

Benton, T. H., 52, 53; on annexa- 
tion of Texas, 104; defeated for 
Senate, 161; opposed Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 178 
Biddle, Nicholas, 49 
Birney, J. G., 77, 98 
Black, J. S., 248 
Bonus bill, 31 
Breckinridge, J. C, 245 
Brook Farm, 80 
Brooks, P. B., 198 
Brown, John, early career, 199-201;' 

raid, 240-243 
Buchanan, James, secretary of 
state, 103; on Oregon, 109; 
election of 1852, 159; Ostend 
manifesto, 212; election of 1856, 
214, 217; administration, 230-250 
Buena Vista, 116 
Buford company, 197 
Bulwer, Sir H. L., 163 

Calhoun, J. C, in 1816, 27-30; 
bonus bill, 31; tariff of 1828, 41; 
election of 1828, 42; resigned 



Vice-Presidency, 55; senator, 58; 

on abolition, 76; secretary of 

state, 91; compromise of 1850, 137 
California, gold discovery, 127-H9- 

slavery, 129, 130; admission, 126^ 

136 
Canaan, N. H., academy, 70 
Cass, Lewis, 122, 123, 159 
Censure of Jackson, 52, 53 
Cerro Gordo, 117 
Charleston, S. C. abolition mails, 

f ^ 

Chase, S. P., 174, 215 
Cherokee Indians, 58, 59 
Chihuahua, 115 
Churubusco, 118 
City of Mexico, 117, 118 
Clay, Henry, leadership, 18, 33; 
on bank of U. S., 30; election of 
1828, 42; tariff of 1833, 57; on 
abolition, 76; on Texas, 84, 93, 
97; election of 1844, 98; com- 
promise of 1850, 133-135; death. 
161 ' 

Clayton, J. M., 126, 180 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 163, 164 
Clifford, Nathan, 103 
Clinton, George, 28 
Cobb, Howell, 133 
Commercial crisis, 1857, 150 
Compromise, Missouri, 35-38; of 

1850, 124-143 
Confederate States of America. 

249, 250 
Congregationalism, 22, 78 
Conner, David, 117 
Constitutional Union party, 245 

{See Elections) 
Contreras, 118 
Corporal's guard, 89 
Corrupt bargain, 42 
Corwin, Thomas, 126 
Cotton belt, 66, 84 
Cotton gin, 25, 65 
Cotton mills, 25 
Crandall, Prudence, 70 
Crawford. W. H., 42 
Crittenden, J. J., 152 
Cuba, filibustering, 164; desired by 
Buchanan, 239 {See Ostend 
Manifesto) 
Cullom, William, 180 
Cumberland Road, 32 
Curtis, B. R., Dred Scott case, 223- 

229 
Curtis, G. T., 154 



253 



254 



INDEX 



Dallas, A. J., 26, 28 

Davis, Jefferson, 192 

Debt reduction, 14!9 

Declaration of Paris, 218 

Democratic party {See Elections, 
1828-1860) 

Dixon, Archibald, 172 

Doniphan, A. W., 115 

Douglas, S. A., compromise of 1850, 
125; election of 1852, 159; 
Kansas-Nebraska biU, 170-179, 
181-183; Lecompton constitu- 
tion, 204; debates with Lincoln, 
231-236; election of 1860, 245 

Dred Scott case, 219-229 

Duane, W. J., 51 

East Florida, 34, S5 

Election of 1820, 40; of 1824, 41-43; 
of 1828, 44, 45; of 1832, 54; of 
1836, 61, 62; of 1840, 88; of 1844, 
97, 98; of 1848, 122, 123; of 
1852, 159-161; of 1856, 213-217; 
of 1860, 245-247 

Embargo Act, 25 

English, W. H.,,176 

Era of good feeling, 40 

Erie Canal, 32 

Everett, Edward, 91, 177 

Expunging resolutions, 62, 53 

Factory system, 79 

Federalists, 14 

"Fifty-four forty or fight," 109 

Fillmore, Millard, becomes Presi- 
dent, 135; on compromise of 
1850, 142; on fugitive slave law, 
152-156; election of 1852, 160; 
election of 1856, 214, 216 

Florida acquisition, 34, 36; State 
admitted, 100 

Force bill, 57 

Forsyth, John, 88 

Fort Leavenworth, 168 

"Forty-niners," 128 

Fourteenth Amendment, 229 

Free Soil Democrats, 160 

Free Soil party and slavery, 132 
(See Elections) 

Fr6mont, J. C, in California, 114, 
115; election of 1856, 216 

French claims, 59 

Fugitive slave act of 1850, 151-168; 
in election of 1852, 161 

Fugitive slave cases: Shadrach, 154; 
Sims, 154, 155; Gorsuch, 155; 
McHenrv, 155; Booth, 183; 
Bums, 183, 184 



Gadsden purchase, 144 

Gag rule, 74, 86 

Garrison, W. L., 69, 70 

Genius of Universal Emancipation, 

69 
Georgia and the Cherokees, 68, 69 
Ghent, treaty of, 8 
Giddings, J. R., 89, 173 
Gold in California, 127-129 
Grant, U. S., 117 
Greeley, Horace, 188, 233 
Greytown, 164 
Guadalupe Hidalgo, treaty of, 119 

Hale, J. P., 160 
Hamilton, Alexander, 29 
Harper's Ferry raid, 240-243 
Harrison, W. H., 62, 88 
Hartford convention, 15 
Hayne, R. Y., 57 . 

Helper's "Impending Crisis, 243 
Higginson, T. W., 184 
Holy Alliance, 38 
Homestead bill (1859), 244, 245 
Houston, Samuel, 85 
Howard, W. A., 197 
Hiilsemann letter, 162, 163 
Hunkers, 122 

Immigration, 146 
Internal improvements, 30-33 
Iowa admitted, 137 
Isthmian canal, 163, 164 

Jackson, Andrew, in Florida, 34; 
election of 1828, 42; administra- 
tion, 46-62; on abolition mail, 
72; on Texas annexation, 86, 92; 
recommends reprisab against 
Mexico, 87 

Jackson men, 45 

Jefferson, Thomas, 16, 17 

Johnson, R. M., 61 

Kansas, early history, 167-169; 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, 170-179; 

Kansas struggle, 187-207 
Kearny, S. W., 113 
Kendall, Amos, 72 
King, W. R., 159 
Know-Nothings, 186, 186 {See 

Elections) 

Labor movement, 80 
Lawrence, Ks., 189 
Leavenworth, Ks., 187 
Lecompton, Ks., 187 
lecompton constitution, 203-205 
Lee, R. E., 117, 241 



INDEX 



255 



Liberator, The, 69 

Liberty party, 77 (See Elections) 

Lincoln, Abraham, early life, 232; 
election of 1860, 246, 247; in- 
augurated, 250 

Lincoln-Douglas debates, 231-236 

Locitl government, 13, 14 

Los Angeles, 114 

Louisiana purchase, 9, 82 

Lovejoy, E. P., 71 

Lundy, Benjamin, 69 

McCulloch V. Maryland, 33, 48 

McLane, Louis, 51 

McLean, John, 62 

Madison, James, 31, 34 

Maine, admission, 36, 37 

Manufactures, 26, 147 

Marcy, W. L., 103, 159 

Marshall, John, 58 

Mason, J. Y., 212 

Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Co., 
188 

May, S. J., 155 

Mexican war, 104-122; finances of, 
149 

Missouri, admission, 35-38; com- 
promise and slavery, 67 

Monroe, James, 31 

Monroe doctrine, 38, 39 

Monterey, Cal., 114 

Monterey, Mexico, 116 

Mormons, 238, 239 

Morrill tariff, 150 

Mosquito Indians, 163 

National Republicans, 45 (See 

Elections) 
Native Americanism, 184-186 {See 

Elections) _ 
Nat Turner insurrection, 71 _ 
New England Antislavery Society, 69 
New England clergy, protest against 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, 177 
New England Emigrant Aid Co., 

188, 196 
New Mexico, organization, 126-136 
New Orleans riot, 165 
Nicaragua, 163 
Non-intercourse Act, 25 
Nootka Sound convention, 93 
Nullification in South Carolina, 55- 

58 

Oliver, Mordecai, 197 
Omnibus bill, 135 

Order of the Star Spangled Banner, 
185 



Ordinance of Nullification, 55 
Ordinance of 1787, 20; and Oregon, 

125 
Oregon question, 93-96, 100, 101, 

109, 110, 125-127 
Oregon trail, 1G8 
Osawatomie, Ks., 200 
Ostend manifesto, 212, 215 

Pacific railway, 218 

Pakenham, Richard, 91, 110 

Palo Alto, 116 

Panama, 163, 218 

Paris, treaty of, 7 

Parker, Theodore, 240 

Pawnee, Ks., legislature, 191, 192 

Peace congress, 249 

Pensacola, Fla., 34 

Personal liberty laws, 153 

Pet banks, 59 

Petitions, abolition, 73-75 

Phillips, Wendell, 71 

Pierce, Franklin, election, 159; 
administration, 1G5-218 

Polk, J. K., election, 97, 98; ad- 
ministration, 103-123; signs Ore- 
gon bill, 127 

Popular sovereignty, 131 

Population statistics, 9-12, 145-147 

Postoffice extension, 149 

Pottawatomie massacre, 200, 201 

Prison reform, 78 

Protection, 27 

Public lands, 60 

Railways, 148 

Reeder, A. H., 189, 190-192, 195, 

196, 202 
Republican party, organization, 210 

211 (See Elections) 
Resaca de la Palma, 116 
Revivals, 78 

Richardson, W. A., 176, 177, 193 
Robinson, Charles, 189, 192, 201 
Rotation in office, 47 
Russia and the Monroe doctrine, 39 

Sabine river, 36 

Saltillo, 116 

Sanborn, Frank, 240, 242 

San Diego, Cal., 113 

San Francisco, Cal., 114 

Santa Anna, 85, 116, 119 

Santa F^, N. M., 113 

Santa Fe trail, 168 

Scott, W. S., 112. 113, 117, 118, 180. 

250 (See Elections) 
Secession, 248-250 



^56 



INDEX 



Sectionalism and compromise, 141 

Seward, W. H., on compromise of 
1850, 138, 139; Rochester speech, 
238; election of 1860, 246 

Shannon, Wilson, 194, 201 

Shawnee Mission, Ks., 191 

Sherman, John, 196 

Slade, William, 73 

Slavery in 1815, 23, 24; growth, 
63, 64, 67, 68; in California, 
129, 130; sectionalism, 141, 142 

Slave trade, 19, 20; foreign, 
prohibited, 66; in District of 
Columbia, 130, 136 

Slidell, John, 105, 106 

Sloat, J. D., 113 

Smith, Gerrit, 155, 173, 240, 242 

Social life (1815), 20-22 

Social reforms, 80 

Society of friends, 157 

Soule, Pierre, 212 

South Carolina nullification, 65-58; 
secession, 248 

Spain and Florida, 84, 35 

Specie circular, 61 

Spoils system, 47 

Stanton. E. M., 248 

Steamboats, western, 32 

St. Marks, Fla., 34 

Stockton, R. F., 114 

Stowe, H. B., 156 

Subtreasury system, 88, 89, 111 

Sumner, Charles, on Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 172, 178; assault, 
198, 199 

Surplus revenue, 60 

Taney, R. B., bank of U. S., 51, 52; 

Dred Scott case, 220-228 
Tariff of 1816, 27; of 1824, 40, 41; 

of 1828, 41; of 1833, 57; of 

1857, 150 
Taylor, Zachary, in Mexican war, 

105-108, 113, 116, 117; election, 

122, 123; administration, 132- 

135; death, 135 
Telegraph system, 148 
Temperance movement, 78 
Territory of U. S. (1815), 8 
Texas question, 59, 82-88, 90-93, 

96-100, 104, 105; boundary and 

claims, 134, 135 
Thayer, Eli, 188 
Thirteenth Amendment, 299 
Topeka, Ks., government, 192, 195, 

201 
Total abstinence movement, 78 
Travel in 1815. 20 



Treaty of Paris, 7; Ghent, 8; 
Webster-Ashburton, 89; Guada- 
lupe Hidalgo, 119; Clayton- 
Bulwer, 163, 164 

Tribune, N. Y., 188, 233 

Trist, N. P., 118, 119, 122 

Tyler, John, administration, 88- 
102; peace congress, 249 

Uncle Tain's Cabin, 156 
Underground Railway, 157 
Unitarian movement, 22, 78 
Utah, territorial organization, 133, 
135, 136; Mormons in, 238, 239 

Van Buren, Martin, secretary of 
state, 44; minister to England, 
64; on Texas, 84, 93, 97; election 
of 1836, 62; election of 1840, 88; 
election of 1848, 123 

Vera Cruz, 117 

Wade, B. F., 173 

Wakarusa war, 194, 195 

Walker, R. J., 103, 204; tariff of 

1846, 111 
War of 1812, 7 
Webster, Daniel, on tariff of 1816, 

27; constitutional views, 33; 

on tariff of 1828, 41; election of 

1836, 62; on abolition, 76; 

resigns as secretary of state, 89; 

on compromise of 1850, 138; 

condemned, 143; on fugitive 

slave law, 152; election of 1852, 

160; death, 161; Hulsemann 

letter, 162, 163 
W^ebster-Ashburton treaty, 89 
West, influence, 18 
West Florida, 34, 35 
West Indies, trade opened, 59 
Whig party (See Elections) 
W^hitfield, J. W., 190, 196, 202 
Whitman, Marcus, 95 
Whittier, J. G., 81; on Webster, 143 
Wilmot proviso, 120, 125, 130 
Wilson, Henry, 188 
Winthrop, R. C, 132 
Wise, H. A., 242 
Wisconsin admitted, 137 
Woman's rights movement, 80 
Women wage-earners, 79 
Wool, J. E., 115 
Wyandotte, Ks., constitution, 205, 

244 

Yancey, W. L., 131 
Young, Brigham, 238 



MAY 9 1913 



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